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THE 






COMIC HISTORY 



X- 



THE UNITED STATES, 



FROM A PERIOD PRIOR TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 
TO TIMES LONG SUBSEQUENT TO THE PRESENT. 



'■u 



By JOHN D. SHERWOOD. 



"Quamquam ridentem dicere verum 
Quid vetatP' 

Horace, Satire I. 

"A man may say a Wise thing though he say it with a Laugh." 

Old Sons. 



WITH ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRY SCRATCHLY. 



FOSTON: 

FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO. 

1870. 



Ens 
■4 

•Sss- ^ 



xi 



Entered according to Act of Congress, In the year 1869, by 
FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO., 

ia the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 




DEDICATION. 



TO MY WIFE. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



SUBJECTS. 

The Company of Distinguished Comedian3 expressly en- 
gaged FOR THIS Performance .... con-front-us Piece. 

Columbus Discovers America Page 39 

The Reader scrapes Acquaintance ^ith the Author . 41 

External View of the Author's Head .... 48 

Internal View of the Same 49 

America before its Discovery 65 

Time stocking America 59 

The Pictured Rocks at Taunton attributed to the North- 
men, OR Skalds, of the Eleventh Century ... 66 

Landing of Columbus . - 68 

Discovery of Newfoundland 71 

Sir Walter Raleigh introduces Smoking to the English 

Court 74 

An Indian Reservation 81 

The First Year's Crop in the New Settlements ... 87 

Drake with his Fleet sails round the World . . 94 

Map of Maryland 105 

Original full-length Portrait of John Smith . . . 110 

Landing op the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers . . .118 



8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 

The Spirits of the Age laying the Foundations of New 

York 128 

Dutch Gentleman trading with thb Indians . . . 134 

New Jersey settled 142 

Full-length Portrait of Penn ...'.... 144 

The City of Brotherly Love in 1681 and 1869 . . . 147 

Temptation ; or, the first American " Ring "... 153 

Woman's Rights in 1637 158 

The Penalties of Witchcraft in 1692 and 1869 . . . 171 

Cotton Mather exorcising a Witch 176 

Expressing a Colonial Governor from London , . . 189 

The Schoolmaster abroad 201 

JoLiET and Marquette down the Mississippi .... 216 

The "Petticoat Insurrection" in Mobile in 1706 . " . 221 

The Championship for the American Belt .... 227 

Britannia forces Tea on her troublesome Child . , 236 

The Surprise Party- to Fort Ticonderoga .... 247 

Washington reviews the troops at Cambridge . . 251 

A Puritan Breakfast 259 

English poor Relations eating Colonists out of House and 

Home 276 

Putnam's Home-Stretch down Horse-Neck .... 293 

New York evacuated, November 25, 1783 .... 804 

The State takes leave of the Colony 314 

The Irrepressible Negro 823 

The Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 338 

Courtship in the Olden Time 353 

School-Days in 1769 and 1869 866 



LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS. 9- 

The American Joss ... 872 

Looking for a Scout 390 

The Romance of Indian Warfare 407 

Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty .... 421 

The Progress of Fashion 432 

A Mormon Family out for a Walk 451 

The Skedaddle of John B. Floyd 461 

An Intelligent Jury 468 

Cotton supreme 483 

The Coroner's Inquest 500 

Cotton down 512 

Members of Congress in A. D. 1900 520 

The Irish Republic in America 629 

Getting Mudd out of the Dry Tortugas .... 533 

School-Teaching from 1869 onwards 642 

The American LaocoOn 647 

The End 549 



CONTENTS. 



PREFATORY. 



Paqe 



TEEATING THE READER TO AN ACCOUNT OF THE 
AUTHOR, AND OF THE PLAN, OBJECT, AND PRIN- 
CIPLES OF THIS HISTORY 41 

« 
The Author, proposing to be intimate with the Reader, deems 

an Introduction desirable. — Born Early and Poor. — How the 
Two Facts were managed and overcome. — School Days and 
Nights. — College Lines, crooked and straight. — Father's 
Face against his. — A New American Decalogue. — Into 
the Married and other States and Territories. — Settling 
down. — Advantages of a Sub-urban Residence. — Outside 
and Inside Views of the Author's Head. — Plans and Pur- 
poses of the Work. — Laughing Facts. — Roman Precedents. 
— Impartiality holding the Shears and Tape. — Sources of 
our Information. — Acknowledgments to Smith and Brown. 
Our Illustrations. 



BOOK FIRST. 

DISCOVEEIES. 

B. C. TO 1607 A. D. 
Chap. 

I. OF AMERICA BEFORE ITS DISCOVERY IN THE FIF- 
TEENTH CENTURY. B. C. TO 1000 A. D. . . 55 

America older than Europe, Asia, or Africa. — Chronic Er- 
rors on the Subject. — Europe presented to America. — 
1* 



12 CONTENTS. 

Truth vindicated. — Proofs of our Superior Antiquity. — 
Luxurious Civilization of tlie Races wliicli stocked this Con- 
tinent before the Indians. — Amount of Coal left by them 
unburned. — Large Supplies of Fish packed away safely in 
our Mountains. — Fish Culture measure of Human Culture. 

— Fossil Cran-iology. — Laughable Blunders of Former His- 
torians and Ethnologists. — Ancient Nations, Babylonian, 
Persian, Greek, the Ten Lost Tribes, etc., trickling through, 
have reappeared on our Side of the Earth. — Instances cited. 

— Mythologies of Greece and Rome originated here. — Proofs 
and Reproofs. — American Nests well feathered Ages ago. 

IL OF THE DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA DURING THE 
ELEVENTH, FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND SEV- 
ENTEENTH CENTURIES. 1000 TO 1607 . . 64 

America not discovered by Jason. — Lithographic Specimens at- 
tributed to the Northmen in the I>leventh Centurj- curious, but 
executed by Skalds more Modern. — Bishop Berkeley's West- 
ern Star not the First American Constellation. — Columbus 
ofifers a Continent at Private Sale ; Isabella, a Spanish Lady, 
takes hinl up, and the Profits also. — A Fish Story confirmed. — 
Of Ferdinand's Necklace. — Price of Eggs advanced in Spain. 

— England finally sees something. — Discoveries which Co- 
lumbus did not make. — Ponce de Leon. — Mexico unfortu- 
nately discovered. — The Straits of Magellan and other 
Straits. — De Soto at the Bottom of the Mississippi. — Cham- 
plain, a wise man, founds Quebec upon a Rock. — Sir Walter 
Raleigh and him smoking. — The Maj'flower anchored. — 
Hudson up stream. 

m. OF THE INDIAN CHARACTER .... 76 
Survey of Indian Character and Lands. — Our Pacific Inten- 
tions towards the Indians. — The Whites better read than the 
Red Men, and the Effects of Learning. — The Pale Complex- 
ion of their Affairs. — Wet Blankets thrown over their other 
Habits. — Different Traits discovered by School-Girls and 
through Official Spectacles. — Meaning of Indian Reserva- 
tions. — Indian Style of Dress and its Conveniences. — Lidian 
Names. — Examples of their Happy Application. 



CONTENTS. 13 



BOOK SECOND. 

SETTLEMENTS AND COLONIES. 
1607 - 1775. 

I. OF AMERICAN SETTLEMENTS GENERALLY . .87 

Some American Grounds, like Coffee, unsettled. — Some Settle- 
ments pulled up by the Roots ; others chilled by Fever and 
Ague. — Moist Soils objected to except by Doctors. — Unex- 
pected Crops of Tomahawks from Wheat sown. — Settlements 
in America because of impracticability of making any at 
Home with Creditors. — Wild Oats sown between .34th and 
38th Parallels. — Frequent Settlements make long Friends. — 
Settlements of Old Tavern Scores in Cliiilky Districts. — Re- 
ligious Squalls prostrate some Plantations. — Indian Tem- 
pests uproot others. — Growth of Virginia, although Queen 
Elizabeth afemme sole. — Clergymen's Settlements. -r- Brides 
unsettled. — Drake around the World. 

IL THE SETTLEMENTS OF VIRGINIA, DELAWARE, 

MARYLAND, THE CAROLINAS, AND GEORGIA . 95 

Colored Views whitened. — Blue Ridges and Black Welts in 
Virginia. — Virginia, smothered up in Infancy by Charters, 
survives Royal Nursing. — Her Vigilance against her Suitors. 

— Cotton introduced. — How the World managed previously. 

— Charles I. and his numerous Autogi-aphs. — Georgia and 
Oglethorpe. — Charleston set up. — A Point on Old Point 
Comfort. — Tobacco first piped about. — Unmamed Girls as 
Articles of Import. — Estimated in, if not by. Pounds. — The 
Fancy Constitution of John Locke for North Carolina. —Its 
owTi Length but Short Life. — South Carolina Rivers do not 
run up. — Popular Errors corrected. — John Wesley. — Sin- 
gular Effect of his Preaching on the Indians.— Maryland as 
a Duck of a Colony canvassed. 

m. JOHN SMITH 106 

John Smith historically considered. — The Number in Leading 
Cities stated. — How classified. — Why he is not put in a sep- 
arate Volume or in an Appendix. — Origin of the Smiths. 



14 CONTENTS. 

— American Genealogical Trees. — Smiths Tip a Stnmp, in 
the Sap, and dangling from the Branches. — The Antiquity 
and Ubiquity of the Smiths. — Variety and Extent of their 
Occupations and Operations. — Will probably in time own all 
the World. — Comic Situations of .lolin Smiths in Cities, at 
Family Dinner-Parties, at Prayer-Meetings, at Balls, in Titles 
to Real Estate, etc. — Whether he can be sued. — Other Legal 
Questions in reference to him considered. — John Smith of 
Pocahontas Fame a Myth. 

IV. OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW ENGLAND 

STATES 115 

Views of the New England States and Character determined by 
one's Church. — Partial Notions about Clocks, Nutmegs, 
Pumpkin Pies, etc. — Getting an Historical Coach to one's 
self. — Why the Puritans did not hang up their Stockings 
on their first Christmas Eve. — Their nearest Neighbors. — 
Indian Points and other Points. — Governor Can'er and 
Want of Meats. — Massasoit, and how he kept his Faith 
in-violate. — New Hampshire on the Rampage. — Why Boston 
was begun, and why it is not finished. — Roger Williams 
and his Providential Ways and Dealings. — Coimecticut 
founded, although its Charter not found. — The Wind against 
Cromwell. — Harvard College. — Vermgnt and her Ways and 
Means. 

V. THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK . . .126 

The Spirits of the Age present at its Foundation. — Who they 
were and how they were affected. — The Wonders of Man- 
hattan in September, 1609. — How the Animal, Vegetable, 
Ornithological, Maritime, and Hi;man Productions then com- 
pared with those now. — What New York Lots were worth 
two hundred and fifty years ago. — Their Owners. — Hud- 
son's Trip up the River. — What he saw and did n't see. — 
The four Dutch Governors; their Doings and Misdoings. — 
Sketch of Holland and the Characteristics which she im- 
pressed upon New Amstei'dam. — Bravery evinced in settling 
Brooklyn. — How the Van Rensellaers and other Vans were 
enticed hither. — The Troubles and Sorrows of Wouter Van 
Twiller and William Kieft. — Of the Surrender of the Dutch, 
and the Instalment of English Rule in New York. — Petrus 
Stuyvesant retires from Business. — His Fann and what he 
raised on it. 



CONTENTS. 15 

VI. THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW JERSEY . . .142 
A spirited Sketch of the Way in which it was done, and the 

Results. 

VII. THE SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA . .143 

Governments in their Action like Pianos. — The Reason; and 
illustrating Examples. — Varieties in the Make-ups of the 
different Settlers of the Colonies- — Character of Penn, and 
why it improves by Age. — His Accomplishments. — His first 
Visit to America in 1681. — Tall Talk and Peace. — Phila- 
delphia, its Early and Late Characteristics. — Delaware sets 
up for herself. — Penn in Prison. — Again in Pennsylvania. — 
Returns to England by the Philadelphia Line. — Pennsyl- 
vania leaps into the Eighteenth Century, and what she does 
there. 

Vni. THE COLONIES IN THE UPPER HALF OF THE 

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY . . . .150 

The Young Colonies watched by the " Old Folks at Home." — 
Required to furnish Inventories of their Property. — Old Peo- 
ple particular as to Shops where the Youngsters traded. — 
Several Articles of Political Housekeeping, as Printing- 
Presses, Jurj'-Boxes, etc., not allowed. — Some Favorites 
among the Children. — The first American Ring. — Crom- 
well as a Step-Father. — The Atlantic Swimming-Bath. — 
Political Rights jaiTed off the Parent Tree; others Fell when 
Ripe. — Some Proprietors sell out to raise Money for Costs. — 
General Thaw in High Places. — Legislative Mills with two 
runs of Stone. — Woman's Rights in Capsules. — How hard 
Puritan Wood got softer. — Episcopal Race-Courses en- 
larged. — A Black Frost curls up the Green Leaves of the 
Charters. — What Sir Edmund Andros swallowed and the 
Fit of Indigestion which followed. — Effect of European 
Housekeeping in setting Colonial Brooms in Motion. — New 
York swept into the English Pan. — Result of .Tames II.'s 
OA'er-staj' in Paris. — Slaps in the Face of Canada and 
their Return. — How Piiblic Events tell on Family Mat- 
ters tolled long and loud. — People occasionally subject to 
Scarlet Fever and Foui-th of .July, but can't live on either. — 
Kidd at Sea; takes off a few People. — How the Deficiency 
was supplied. — Number of Colonists at close of Seventeenth 
Century. — Would have been more had Chicago started. — 
Colonial Colts at the Bars of the eighteenth Century. 



16 CONTENTS. 

IX. WITCHCRAFT . . . . . .169 

The Witch-Caldron at Salem. — How its Bubbling raised Tea- 
Pot Lids and has kept open other Lids ever since. — The 
Young Female Witches at Salem condemned to the Ties of 
Matrimony ; the Old Ones to harder Knots. — The Sin of 
being Old considered. — The Scarlet Letter. — Examples 
of Witchcraft cited. — The Delusion of Adam and Eve at the 
first Pomological Convention in Eden. — Woman as Man's 
familiar Spirit; and her Conjuries. — Cases of David, Sam- 
son, and Herod. — Antony dissolved in that Egyptian Drink 
Pearl Water. — The Maid of Orleans and what an Arc she 
subtended. — The Philters of Love, Ambition, Heroism, etc., 
administered to Men and Nations. — Their Effects. — De- 
lusions, like Measles, catching. — The Frenzies of Fashion 
fully described. — The Stock Exchange. — Private Witch- 
crafts at Quiltings, Apple-Parings, etc. — Red Corn and 
other Red Ears. — Sweet Witches. — A Jury of gushing 
Girls. — Punishment of Men incapable of being bewitched. 



X. OF THE MANNERS, MORALS, HABITS, AND LAWS 
OF THE COLONISTS IN THE SEVENTEENTH 
CENTURY . . . . ' . . . 177 

First-class Telescope to see the Manners of a Past Age. — 
Difficulties of Near-sighted and Long-sighted People. — Near 
Objects more embarrassing to the Observer than Distant. — 
Why? — The Ghosts of the Past. — The Manners and Dress 
of Stuyvesant, Eliot, Calvert, Rolfe, etc. described. — Man- 
ners of the Mass detailed; in their Work, Play, Diet, Court- 
ship, Fashions, Treatment of Young Ladies and Gentlemen, 
Children, Servants, etc. — Superior Advantages of Pater- 
familias then in making Acquaintance with his Wife and 
Children.— Fast Girls and Calicoes. — The Isothermal Lines 
of Ethics. — Certain Vices, like Eggs, laid secretly and 
hatched afterwards. — The Fashions of Crime at various 
Epochs compared. — Jails and Jail-Birds. — The ingenious 
Crimes of Trade, Corporations, Schools, and Seminaries 
noted. — How Sects are frozen or thawed by Tempera- 
ture. — Northern and Southern Sectarianism. — Why Episco- 
pacy flourished in Warai Latitudes. — The early Commer- 
cial Morality of New York. — Baptists, Congregationalists, and 
Independents. — The Habits of the Century; their Material, 
Color, Durability, and Wear. — The Laws mainly imported. — 



CONTENTS. 17 

What a Business the Colonists carried on, notwithstanding, 
in the Domestic Article. — Kindness of the Proprietors in 
furnishing Eeady-made Office-holders not appreciated. — 
American Itch for Law-making. — Laws against Criminals. — 
Their Crimson Color. — How the Eains of Mercy fell on 
hard Enactments, and the Thaw which followed. — Coroners' 
Inquests sat upon. — Verdicts under various Lights. — Jus- 
tices of the Peace, and the Law they peddled. — Adminis- 
trations of Law then and now contrasted. — How Colors, 
although imponderable, turned the Judicial Scales. 

XL THE COLONIES IN THE LOWER HALF OF THE 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . . . .194 

The Colonial Colts in the large open Field of the Eighteenth 
Century. — The Effects of a Sniff of French Gunpowder. — 
Queen Anne's War, 1702 - 1713 ; its Cost and Results in Eu- 
rope and America. — Acadia changes its Name to Nova 
Scotia. — How the Colonies started a Newspaper in 1704. — 
Philadelphia in a Sheet in 1719 ; and how comfortable it was. 
— The Franklin Bros, furnish Food too condensed even for 
Boston. — Benjamin quits the Hub ; foots it without tiring to 
New York. — How he got through New Jersey without paying 
Toll. — Entei's Philadelphia with Two Loaves, and sets up an 
Intellectual Bakery. — Banks built on the Sands of Credit. — 
Moving Accidents. — John Law's Scheme to use the Missis- 
sippi Valley ; how it grew ; what it promised, and how it 
performed. — A French Pasquinade. — The Results of a Bank 
Panic in the Eighteenth Century. — The Effects on the 
Manufacture of Children. — Number of Colonists in 1713 and 
1743. — The Condition of Delaware, New Hampshire, and 
Vermont. — The Training of Young America. — Yale Col- 
lege and its Mustard-like Growth. — The American Learned 
Oak. — The Connection between Slate-Pencil and Gum Chew- 
ing and Female Education. — What took Place between 1713 
and 1743. — A Negro Plot in New York. — Negroes thrown 
overboard, and the Bubbles that rose. — How large Historic 
Doors swing on small Hinges. — Examples from A to W. — 
What happened because Maria Theresa was a Female. — The 
English Georges ; what Bulls they were, and made. — The 
Transatlantic Bullocks, and how they rushed into King 
George's War in 1744, and what Mischief they did for Four 
Years. 



18 CONTENTS. 



Xn. THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 

1754 TO 1763 208 

No Hopes for the Millennium in Amei'ican Colonies up to 1754. 

— More Swords than Ploughshares. — Mars in America. — 
Sixteen Indian Wars in 147 Years. — How they were fed by- 
French Oil and blown by French Bellows. — The Five Great 
Continental Wai's, and how they reached over and handled 
the Colonies. — The Treaty Patches, and how they failed to 
cover the War Breaches. — I'he Volcanic Character of Ameri- 
can Soil. — How the Animosities of France and England 
grew through Four Centuries, and in what a Hateful Harvest 
they waved, in 1754, each Side the Sea. — Celebrated Fights 
between the Rivals in Europe. — How Commercial Competi- 
tion rubbed in Salt Water, and Religious Difierences Brim- 
stone, into the Wounds. — Memorable Cases of Battle Surg- 
ery. — The Relative Merits of English and French Claims to 
America fully stated. — Deeds of Land and of Arms clash. — 
French Jesuits with Crosses and Traders with Skins encom- 
pass the English Plantations from Maine to Minnesota, and 
thence to Alabama and Texas. — Marquette, Joliet, La Salle, 
Lallemand, and others. — The Former escaped the Fast Life of 
Chicago, and La Salle the Hazards of Natchez. — France seeks 
to fasten a Remarkable Rosaiy around the Neck of Young 
America ; England to cut it. — Suitors to the same Maiden, 
they suited not her nor each other. — Their soft Ways to her. 

— Their Hardness to each other. — Their Long Quarrels over 
her Person and Purse result at last in a Decisive Fight. — 
The Championship for the American Belt. — The Champions, 
the Belt, and the Ring described. — How John Bull and Jean 
Crapeau stepped into the Latter. — The Nine Rounds from 
1754 to 1763. — How Mr. Bull won ; what he said, and how 
Monsieur Crapeau behaved. — A Suitor pleased, and a Suitor 
non-suited. 

Xm. CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION . 229 

The People as Y'east. — The Fermentation. — Washington, Sam- 
uel Adams, Patrick Henry, Rutledge, Franklin, Otis, and oth- 
ers, and their Value in the Colonial Fermenting Pots. — State 
Courtships in 1754-17&5 and 1774, tend to a more Perfect 
Union. — How Home Confidences operate. — What Etfect the 
English Navigation Acts had on American Swimmers. — 
Lord North and Charles Townshend. — Colonial Assemblies 
and Country Dances. — Dislike of Impositions. — That small 



CONTENTS. 19 

Boston Tea-Part}'. — The large Amount of Atlantic Water 
between the Tea Seller and Tea Purchaser. — When Tea 
can't be sweetened. — Be-cause as a Cause. 



BOOK THIRD. 

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

THE FIRST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL, 

GRIEVANCES ; THE PREPARATION ; THE START. 235 

The Hard Lot of the Colonists, and what they got from it. — 
Colonial Governors, like Old Topers at a Free Opening of a 
Tavern. — The Miseries of a Visit from Relatives poor and 
proud. — How, like poor Fowls, the Navigation Acts laid 
many bad Eggs. — Examples cited. — Parliamentary Laws 
ingeniously floored and roofed. — English Strabismus, or 
Squint-eyedness, sought to be made fashionable in the Colo- 
nies. — Success in Canada. — English Tubs to catch Revenue 
ofif American Slopes. — Manufacture of Hats prohibited ; how 
and where the Fur flew. — What a Cute Yankee saw from 
the Top of the American Roof. — How Four Yards are worth 
more than Five. — Bull-yism defined, and its Laws stated. — 
The First Bill to raise Revenue ; the large Bird behind it 
described. — Sent over to America, it was foul-ly treated. — 
Molasses denied to Colonists. — Effects on Yankee Appetites 
and on the Increase of Straws in Custom-House Casks. — 
Stamps and Stampedes. — The Act repealed ; the Sting left 
In.— Another Bill and larger Bird behind it in 1767. — The 
First Blood. — The Wheel starts ; its Hub, Spokes, and Pe- 
riphery. — English Bees swarm over and settle in Boston and 
other tender Parts. — The Dis-cord-ant Sounds at Concord. — 
George Washington ; his Appearance and Costume, and what 
befell him, June, 1775. — Gage falls from a Tree. — Why and 
Howe ? — Washington seizes Boston Neck. — The Spasms. — 
Bunker Hill gets a Scar and afterwards an Ugly Monumental 
Patch. — The Boone Colonists in Kentucky. — How they 
blazed a-way thither from Virginia. — Washington at Cam- 
bridge. — Unseasoned Troops seasoned. — General Montgom- 
ery earns Laurels at Quebec mixed with Cj'press. — The 
Revolutionary Wheel throws off Dusty Colonial Governors. 
— How Washington broke up the Hessian Swarm at Boston, 

B 



20 CONTENTS. 

and Howe they flew to Halifax. — Washington attends a Lec- 
ture in Boston. — General Lee's Neck-and-Neck Race with 
Sir Henry Clinton for New York ; Lee ahead 120 Minutes. 
Sir Henry and a Party of Jolly Dogs alight near Charleston, 
and how the Waspish Lee lit upon and stung them. — Where 
the Jolly Dogs then went. — The Wheel well started. 

n. JULY FOURTH 1776 AND SO FORTH . . .257 

Review of our Historical Journey from the Start up to the Sum- 
mit of the 4th of July. — Resume of our Tramp through Pre- 
Columbian and Post-Columbian Times. — Our March from 
St. Augustine, via Jamestown and the Manhattan Cabins, to 
the Temperance Tavern at Plymouth. — Descriptions of In- 
dian Inten-uptions. — Polite Litei'ference of Gallic Gentlemen 
at Narrow Parts of the Road in 1689, 1710, 1745, etc. — Ban- 
ditti on the Highways of Histoiy, English, French, and 
Dutch. — Blazing Description of the Summit, the Flagstaff, 
Flag, and Eagle. — The Grand Political Pic-Nic there of 
Fifty-one Wise Men. — The Thunder Storms around them ; 
and their Behavior. — General Account of this Group ; and 
how remarkable and marked. — Special Portraitures of 
Thirteen of them. — Some Peculiar Heads there, and how 
much George HL wanted them. — Prayer of John Adams. — 
A Great Freshet of a Speech and what it carried off. — A Re- 
markable Declaration made by .Jefferson. — An Electrical 
Battery charged and discharged. — The Peppering George 
in. got. — How he worked Seven Years against the Declara- 
tion. — The Gun-powdery Effect of the first Fourth, and the 
Fire-Crackers since touched off by it. — Lidependence origi- 
nally handled without Gloves ; now by Aldermen and very 
Common Councilmen with a half-dozen pair apiece. — The 
Fourths up to 18.50. — Tar Ban-el Eloquence. — Military and 
Civic Renown snatched on that day. — What Eggs, contain- 
ing Addling Heroes, pip on that Day. — How Swords embar- 
rass Crooked Legs. — Militia Lines, and what Snarls they get 
into. — Dissolving Bursts of Golden Glories. — Effects of Sul- 
phur administered to a Rural Population. — Cakes of Ginger- 
bread, and how they stuck in the Teeth, Stomach, and Mem- 
ory. — Lamentations over the Decav of the Old-time Fourths. 



CONTENTS. 21 

III. SECOND TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL -, 
ITS ECCENTRIC BUT ONWARD MOVEMENTS. 
1776-1780 277 

English Hawks gather around New York.— Washington watches 
them. — About an Esquire. — Tlie Way the Germans took 
Brooklyn the fii-st Time.— How they returned, not to their 
Mutton, but to Kalbfleisch. — Difficulty of reaching New 
York from Brooklyn in 1776. — Washington takes a Trip to 
Harlem. — The British also. — Red Eyes and Disfigured Faces 
the Consequence. — Lord Howe attempts to get around the 
American Squire. — The slight Unpleasantness at White 
Plains. — The diflerent Uses of the Croton Water in 1776 and 
now. — The Amount of Whiskey it took in 1869 to qualify the 
Water in New York. — Washington ventures into New Jersey. 

— Set-to at Fort Lee. — Washington across Rivers. — Phila- 
delphia covered. — Homesickness of Agricultural Lads. — 
What befell Lee at a Tavern. — Washington crosses the Dela- 
ware and drops Christmas Presents into German Stockings. 

— The Effects of Yankee Doodle on Lafayette, De Kalb, Kos- 
ciusko, Pulaski, and others. — Friends of America in Eng- 
land, Fox, Hume, etc. — Friends of England in America. — 
The Statue and Statutes of George III. repealed.— Battle of 
Princeton. — The Germans obtain Cider and Sausages at 
Danburv. — Colonel Meigs tickles the Feet of Long Island, 
and makes Congress laugh. - Colonel Prescott is obliged to 
rise very early one Morning at Newport. — Silas Deane and 
B. Franklin in France. — What followed. — Burgoyne tries 
to find a back-stair Passage to New York. — Strong Gates in 
his Way near Saratoga. — Still-Water runs deep. — Brandy- 
Wine an unpalatable Drink. — French Treaty with America 
jn 1778. — The Wheel moves in Water and turns out French 
Names. — Crossing New Jersey. Lord Howe collides with 
Washington at Monmouth. — Count d'Estaing is prevented 
by an Injunction off the New York Bar from entering New 
York. — Coquetting, but no Engagement, near Newport.— 
Buzzard's Bay and its Roosts. — Little Egg Harbor and its 
Nests and what was laid there. —The Benefits of the Wyo- 
ming' Massacre.- Guerilla War at the South. - Savannah 
trounced.— Horse Neck and Putnam's Home-Stretch down 
it — Count d'Estaing's Yachting. — Spain hankers for Gib- 
raltar. — England as a Pawn-Broker.- Paul Jones and his 
Whip. 



22 CONTENTS. 

IV. THE LAST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY 

WHEEL ; ACCELERATIONS ; SLOWINGS ; THE 
GRIST. 1780-1783 296 

The different Opening of 1780 for those who pushed and those 
who obstructed the Revolutionary Wheel. — The Strain on 
both Sides. — Hard Spring in Charleston in consequence of 
Leaden Hail-Storms. — How these Storms spread ; and how 
the Crops were saved from Ruin by Marion, Sumter, and 
Pickens. — The Carolina Game Cock, and his sharp Spurs in 
the Sides of Cornwallis and Tarleton. — Gates broken down, 
and the Presidency lost at Camden. — Greene set up in his 
Place, proving a good standing Color. — The Village of St. 
Louis assailed. — Andre humiliates himself, and is Ex- 
alted. — Arnold gets $ 50,000, a Brigadier's Commission, 
and is elected by General Contempt into the Order of Juda3 
Iscariot. — New- Year's Day among the Pennsylvania Troops 
at Morristown. — The United States Treasury, made less 
Celestial, becomes Defiled by filthy Lucre. — The Goring 
and Tossing of Tarleton by Morgan at the Cow-Pens. — An 
Irish-like Fight at Eutaw Springs. — Southern Hunters 
around the British Flock at Charleston and Savannah. — 
The troublesome Seizure of Virginia Assemblymen. — How 
the Captors missed burning their Fingers with Jefferson's 
red Hair. — Cornwallis enmeshed at Yorktown. — What 
Lord North said. — What the English George threatened and 
what the American George did. — " Let there be Peace"; 
and Peace was. — What England lost and America gained 
— The kind of Grist obtained. 

V. HOW A POOR CONSTITUTION BROKE DOWN . . 305 
Every Community has its Axis of Growth. — That of the Con- 
federation described. — Causes of the Distmst of Federated 
Power. — How the States prefen-ed to sew up the Treasury 
Pocket rather than allow their own Agents to put their Hands 

in it for necessary Funds. — Facetious Bills of Exchange.— 
The Shady and Sunny Side of Power. — Similarities and Dis- 
similarities of the States. — The Committee to draft Confed- 
eration Sixteen Months over the Cold Nest. — The curious 
Knot-ty Grub that issued. — The Spawn of Doubt put to the 
Nurse of Jealousy. — How it was nursed, starved, and doc- 
tored; and what a poor Constitution it got. The Confed- 
erate Scheme like a Pine Board. — It could not raise Money, 
An Army, Credit, Postage, Revenue : in fact, could not 



CONTENTS. 23 

raise itself. — The Comic Side of the Franking Privilege. — 
A desirable Prohibition. — How the Grub became a Cater- 
pillar, and the Caterpillar a Butterfly. — A very Larky 
Phoenix rises, crowing Yankee Doodle. 



BOOK FOURTH. 

THE UNITED STATES. 

I. THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 1777-1787.. . 313 

The Constitution as a Resort for Shoppers in Civil Rights. — 
Every kind of Article to be found either for Ordinary or Ex- 
ceptional Use. — The Fringe called Preamble; its Thread, 
Texture, and Quality. — Counterfeit Patterns and Simula- 
tions easily detected. — Piles of heavy Cloths for the Coun- 
try's Winter Use in War, Financial Storms, etc. — Ex- 
ecutive and Legislative Ready-made Clothing. — Judicial 
White Goods. — Hosiery for Congressional Understandings, 
swift or slow. — A variety of Miscellaneous Wares; Con- 
trivances for catching People with Colored Skins; Habeas- 
Corpus Non-Suspenders ; Muzzles for violent or hungry Con- 
gressmen; Handsome Checks on the Treasury; Specimens of 
tender Gold and Silver; Militia Uniforms; Padlocks for se- 
curing Houses against Searches; Jury-Boxes, Trial Bal- 
ances, and other Goods. — The Sumner Patent. — The latest 
Novelty to prevent Electoral Black-and-White Suits from 
being stripped off. — State-Rights Dresses, and strong Fed- 
eral Out-Fits. — Messrs. Calhoun, J. Davis, Webster, Clay, etc. 
The Manufacture of bright Buttons, called "Coins." — The 
Fifteenth Amendment. — Doubtful Packages. — Paper Money 
as a Substitute for real Money. — Unauthorized Use of the 
Constitutional Bazaar. — Seekers of Goods never made. — 
Nicholas Biddle and his Gold Suit. — Everybody suited at the 
Federal Store. — Of excessively sharp and dense-headed 
Shoppers. — How Articles are mistaken. — Water-proof Goods 
for River and Harbor Dredging and for Lighting Coasts. — 
Of long Selvedges, or Railroad Strips, and their wonderful 
Elasticity. — Rights and Lefts. 



24 CONTENTS. 

II. CONSTKUCTION; OE, WASHINGTON'S ADMINISTRA- 
TION. 1789-1797 324 

How the Thirteen Colonial Children crept into their New- 
Bed. — The Upholstering described. — Why Ehode Island 
was last in. — : Who tucked her up. — Washington as Superin- 
tendent, and John Adams as First Assistant. — The Family 
low in Credit. — Amount of their Indebtedness compared 
with ours. — Washington's Inaugural. — His Exemption 
from Office Beggars, Committees, Pugilistic M. C.s, bor- 
ing Place-Seekers, enterprising Donors, etc. — Washington 
as a Spirit. — His Capacity to select a Cabinet. — Who they 
were. — Of Heniy Knox. — The Chief Justice and Attorney- 
General. — Amendments to a perfect Constitution. — The 
Supreme Court as a sound, seaworthy Tribunal.— Why 
States cannot be sued by Individuals. — How Governments 
get around paying Interest on Principle. — Streaks of the 
Millennium. — Of the Public Debt. — Discrimination among 
Creditors. — Misfortune of being a Cisatlantic Holder of 
American Bonds. — Alexander Hamilton's Notions. — Wash- 
ington's Receptions and Dinner-Parties. — The Political 
Color of the President's Silver Spoons and Window Cur- 
tains. — The Honeymoon of the new Government dis- 
turbed. — Ganderous Long-bills splash Washington. — The 
French Revolution and its Conundrums. — How answered by 
Washington and the Federals; how by Jefferson and the 
Anti-Federals. — The Census Act procures Names without 
Owners. — The Naturalization Laws and their Pat-riot pro- 
ducts. — Polls and Polling-Places. — A Sinking Fund that 
did not sink. — How Vermont made the Tliirteen States 
old. — An Indian War. — Cincinnati begins. — Kentucky 
starts. — Mistakes about Bourbon. — Washington's second 
Term. — What Genet did, and how he was done for. — Help- 
ful Americans. — Tlie Whiskej' Rebellion of 1794. — The 
Year of Treaties; how they enlarged M'hile they tied us. — 
Tennessee the Sixteenth State. — Nashville gets warm. — 
Washington's Farewell, and its cheap Imitations. — The 
Shades of Office. — Who crept in and who stepped into the 
Sunshine. 

IIL OLD FAMILY PORTRAITS 340 

Modern Photographic Albums like Ancient Roman Simulacra. — 
The Pleasure of looking at the Likenesses of Friends. — The 
Portraits of om- Fore-Fathers. — Our dear old Great- Grand- 



CONTENTS. 25 

father George Washington. — His one hundred and twenty- 
eight original Portraits. — His unique Character; of the same 
Size all the Way up. — His Manners and Characteristics. — 
How the Eighteenth Century, so long mated, refused to sur- 
vive him. — Our Great-Grand and good Mother Martha 
Washington. — The Resemblance between her and a Bowl 
of ripe Strawberries and Cream. — Her Pride. — What Quali- 
ties were corseted in her Bosom. — Our favorite Uncle, Ben- 
jamin Franklin. — How the Sky got into his Face and how 
it stays charged. — Looks like an hereditary Director of all 
the Estates. — A born Trustee. — What an Idea Burns might 
have got of him in 1774, and how expressed it. — Of our 
Aunt, Mrs. James Madison; and M'hat a fine Lady she 
was. — Her careful Dress and Jlanuers. — Impressive but 
patronizing. — How Time forgot her, and the Years ran on 
un-notched. — The forty Years she acted as Presidentess. — 
Patrick Henkv described in Dress, Person, shooting Game, 
and taking Audiences. — Our dear Visitor, General La- 
fayette; his Difficulties in reaching us; his noble Bride; 
his Embarkation at a Spanish Port; his Labors here; his 
two subsequent Visits, and how he survived Hand-shaking 
and Kissing. — About John Jay and his Wife Sallie 
Livingston. — How they lived and what he became. — 
Glances at Israel Putnam and his expressive Face; at 
Nathaniel Greene and his square, Quaker Character; at 
the Telescopic Ea'cs of Francis Marion, with a Dash at his 
soldierly Qualities. — The Effigies of the Wise Men. — Gen- 
eral Sketches of our Heroes and Heroines. — A Heart Delinea- 
tion of the Mothers, Wives, and Sisters of the I^Ien of the 
Kevolution. 



IV. THE STRUGGLE AND FALL OF FEDERALISM; OR, 

JOHN ADAMS'S ADMINISTRATION. 1797 - 1801. 354 

The Pre-Adamite Epoch: its Upheavals and Disruptions in 
America, and the red-hot diplomatic Stones, Fauchet and 
Adet, ejected from France upon us. — The new French 
Acrostics; and the Attempts by our Commissioners and 
Congress to solve them. — Gold-mounted Spectacles, oftered 
us by France; and our Inability to see our Interest or Duty 
through them. — Why and when the Keel of the American 
Navy was laid. — Of tlie Alien and Sedition Laws; why 
passed and how passed liv. — General Washington and the 
Gallic Cock; a Crow never crowed out. — Napoleon's Tour 
2 



26 CONTENTS. 

in Egypt and Palestine described; and its Results on the 
Treaty of Peace deduced. — Of the Office and Offices of 
Consul. — A Review and new View of our Difficulties with 
France from 1790 to 1800. — What a Pitt England fell into. — 
The City of Washington as a Geographical Study. — About 
Mississippi, Alabama, and the French Growth of Mobile. — 
The Territorial Condition illustrated. — The Introduction of 
Vaccine and other Virus. — Why some Things first break out 
in Boston. — State of Parties in 1801. — Why the first Adams 
was banished from the Presidential Eden; and the Flaming 
Swords which prevented his Return. 

V. THE CHIEF AMERICAN PRODUCTIONS OF THE 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 360 

The Cereals and Serials of the last Century. — Hares caught be- 
fore cooked. — Useless Indians put under Ground. — Human 
Bones the Phosphates of History. — The Statecraft of Wash- 
ington, Jeflerson, and Others. — The Automatic Workings 
of Governments exposed. — What small Brains rule. — De- 
scription of our Government Machine. — Its Merits and De- 
merits. — The Disadvantages of frequent Changes of official 
Workmen. — How the Machine-Oil is stolen. — The Inven- 
tions of the Eighteenth Cycle of Time. — An American 
Noah inebriated by the Cotton-Gin. — How Ham laughed 
and how Japhet put a Blanket over the Patriarch. — The 
Growth of Commerce. — The Notions which Importations put 
in and on the Heads of the Young People. — Paris supplies 
the Jlistakes of Nature. — Of Dress. — Hoops, Head-Gear, 
Coats, Vests, Tights, etc., descanted upon. — Improvements 
in Roads and Means of Transit. — The .Journey from New 
York to Boston in 1732. — The Road-Maker and Vehicle- 
Propeller as Leaders of Civilization. — The great Invention 
now needed. — The Populations of New York and Boston in 
1700. — Description of the Former in that Year by an English 
Traveller. — Slave-Market in New York in 1711. — Manufac- 
tures and their Growth. — The Habits of the Period de- 
scribed. — Improvements in Morals, and wherein. — A gen- 
eral Review of American Literature and Book-Making through 
the Century. — The first American printed Volume ; and how 
fast and long it ran. — Earliest Original Book of Poems ; by 
a Woman, with a touching Specimen therefrom. — An Ac- 
count of the leading Writers on Theology, Political Science, 
Government, Natural Science, Natural History, of Novels, 
etc. — The American Joss; its Worshippers, and their Treat- 
ment. 



CONTENTS. 27 

VI. DEMOCRACY IN POWER; OR, JEFFERSON'S AD- 

MINISTRATION. 1801-1809 373 

Few Removals by Mr. Jefferson from the Ungilt Official 
Chairs. — Mr. Smith gets into the Navy. — Who started long 
Messages to Congi-ess ; and the Difficulty of finding an End to 
them. — War with Tripoli; and the Complexion with which 
the Bey ended it. — Decatur and his Mediterranean Travels. 
— Ohio in 1802. — The early Danger it ran of being all cut up 
into City Lots — How the Exodus of its Population was the 
Genesis of its Growth. — Of Westering Caravans. — Bona- 
parte sells Louisiana, and what a Sell it was. — How we 
were saved an extra Volume of Supreme Court Decisions. — 
The Murder of Alexander Hamilton. — A Ghost-Story about 
Aaron Burr. — The public Estimate of his Character un- 
changed by Biographical varnishing. — A South Carolina 
Conceit. — The Play of Lear in Tripoli. — Peculiar Mussul- 
man Habits; the Author of Don Quixote. — Michigan escapes 
the Cuppings of Eastei'n States. — Her lymphatic Tempera- 
ment. — Lake Michigan as a Breakwater against Chicago. — 
Burr tried for Treason, " not proven " guilty, and surrendered 

— to himself — Of Bonaparte and other Usurpers. — The 
Oldest dislike the Youngest. — History of the Attempts of 
George 111. and Bonaparte to blockade without Ships. — 
Once a Bull always a Bull. — Search of American Ships for 
Seamen. — The Unwisdom of Half-apologies. — The Ameri- 
can Embargo and its Popularity with Unmarried Girls. 

VII. THE UNITED STATES AT SEA; OR, MADISON'S 

CRUISE. 1809-1817 382 

The Captain and Officers of the " Seventeen Sisters " which put 
to Sea in a Gale. — Diplomatic Talks. — Difference between 
one's own Cows gored, and one's OAvn Bull in a Neighbor's 
Field stoned, exemplified. — Cave crinem. — Bonaparte im- 
proves the Code Napoleon. — Executions before Trials. — 
Horace Greeley fights benevolentlj' into the World. — Louisi- 
ana and her Vivacious Debts taken in ; what sweetened them. 

— Witch-Hazel Rods of Clay. Cheves, etc., dip to the National 
Mines of Feeling. — Our Second Wrestling-JIatch with Eng- 
land. — The Hull-sale Surrender of Michigan. — Colonel Cass 
breaks his Sword, and gets an Anglo-phobia. — Better Hulls 
on the Water. — America man-ies the Sea. — A Wasp on a 
Frolic. — Marine Flirtations and Engagements. — The Consti- 
tution, an Old Sea-Flirt ; her rapid Winiung and Wocmg of 



28 CONTENTS. 

the Java. — South Carolina loses a Presidential Candidate. — 
Of the Three Armies afield. — Harrison at Tippecanoe and 
the Thames. — Colonel R. M. Johnson's life-long Chase for 
Tecumseh's Scalp. — Toronto emptied and filled. — General 
Brown, a Real Man, in Spite of his Name. — General Wade 
Hampton. — Court-Murtials, and how they touch oflT Military- 
Charges. — The United States at Sea on Land. — The Hornet 
on a Peacock. — An Immortal Word wrung from a Mortal 
Moment. — Connnodore Perry. — General Scott improves the 
Niagara Frontier for Hack-Drivers. — Macdonough charges 
Lake Champlain with Heroic Ligredients. — English Marine 
Parades. — Cotton Breastworks at New Orleans. — Their 
Feminine Adoption. — The Ti-eaty of Peace and its Wonder- 
ful Omissions. — Costs and Gains of the War. — The Hartford 
Convention and its Equestrian Exploits. — Mr. Calhoun and 
Invisible Ink. 

VIII. THE ERA OF GOOD-WILL ; OR, MONROE'S NEST- 

ING. 1817-1825 396 

Why BjTon did not write sometimes. — Application. — Rain- 
bow after the Shower. — The Happy Family. — An Inlaid 
Cabinet. — Virginia's Dower Rights in the Presidency.— 
Five New States. — The Three M's. — Proof from the Census 
of 1820 that Chicago had not started. — The Missouri Com- 
promise. — A Goocl Bridle until used. — Florida bought in 
1819. — What we got over the Bargain.— The Florida Kej'S. 

— The Dry Tortugas thrown in. — The Dews fortunately left. 

— A Cracked Cup in the Family Cupboard. — The Monroe 
Doctrine. 

IX. TROUBLES BUBBLE ; OR, THE SORROWS OF JOHN 

QUINCY ADAMS. 1825-1829. . . • 399 

Parallel between Sidney Smith's Old Razor and J. Q. Adams's 
Term. — How several Gentlemen, touched by Age, reached 
in Vain after Honors too high. — Who they were ; and what 
Acid Grapes the House of Representatives snatched from 
them. — Pamphleteering and Privateering. — An Italian 
Saving.— Description of a Good Statesman spoiled in the 
Mould of a Politician. —An Illustrative Anecdote. — Parti- 
san Scales weighing Public Interests. — The Weights —The 
Depravity of Political Blunders. — History vs. Party Judg- 
ments. 



CONTENTS. 29 

X. THE AGE OF HICKORY ; OR, JACKSON'S EPOCH. 

1829-1837. ■ 402 

Military Men, domesticated to Civil Life, like tamed Animals. 

— General Jackson's Camp Traits in the White Den at Wash- 
ington. — His Prehensile Habits claw out the Eyes of several 
Measures. — How he foraged on his Political Enemies, and 
turned his Troops of Friends into the Public Pastures. — 
Lord Palmerston's Remark upon Gladstone ; and its Ameri- 
can Application. — An Insurrection among the Household 
Cabinet Troops. — How the vigorous Hickory Club, wielded 
chivalrously for a Woman, quelled it.— The President moves 
on the Bank, and captures all its Fortified Points. — Chicago 
starts in 1830. — Why it did not overtake and annex the . 
United States. — South Carolina threatens Nullification, and 
is threatened. — Mr. Calhoun violently promised an elevated 
Position between two Posts. Mr. Clay's Compromise. — 
Horace Greeley starts the First Daily Paper. — Its untimely 
End bewailed in Verse. — Black Hawk caged and shown 
around. — Georgia, the Cherokees and Supreme Court. — 
Three Celebrities gained by the Seminole War. — Of Ar- 
kansas and its Papal Little Rock. —Prospects for the Pope 
when flung from the Tarpeian. — An Arkansas Paul preach- 
ing in the American Athens and Corinth. — Old Hickory and 
the Nuts left to be cracked. 

XL THE DUTCH REIGN OF MARTIN VAN BUREN. 

1837-1841 409 

A New-Yorker reaches the White House, and has Hard Fare 
there. — The Disadvantages of Competition. — A Financial 
Earthquake breaks large Amounts of Crockery. — How much 
made a Pile in 1837. — The Si;b-Treasury. — The Connection 
between long Messages and Anarchy in Finance. — Defalca- 
tions in Office. — Why an Old Man's House is easily robbed. 

— The Phantom of Slaver j\ — Extraits de I'Afrique. — Prin- 
ciples and Goods sold at a Profit. — A Political Trader loses 
his Capital, and gives up Business. 

XIL THE HARRISON-TYLER TROUPE ; HOW IT PLAYED. 

1841-1845 412 

General Harrison's Death and Life Insurance Companies. — 
Whig Bank-Bills with no Tyler Bodies to suit them. — A 



30 CONTENTS. 

Good Flint which required a first-rate Gun, Stock, Breech, 
and Barrel, to suit it. — Definition of Crabs, etc. — The Ash- 
burton Treaty. — The Bankrupt Act, and whom it helped. — 
Misfortunes and Fortunes. — Mr. Calhoun's Texas Trick. — 
Diplomatic Magic - Lanterns exposed. — Roman - like Gar- 
ments with Carthaginian Spots. — Florida our Stocking- 
Heel ; how darned. — Yarns about it. — Iron Railings as 
State Corsets. — How the Florida Keys might be usefully 
employed. 

XIII. POLK'S WHIRL; OR, THE AMERICAN POLKA. 

1845-1849 41G 

The Floor Committee for the coming Polka described. — History 
of previous Balls, Country Dances, Virginia Reels, Quincy 
Waltzes, Irish .ligs. South Carohna Shake-ups, etc. — General 
Taylor, his Advances and Movements at Palo Alto, Resaca 
de la I'alma, Monterey, and Buena Vista. — How his Part- 
ner, the Army, was taken away. — General Scott among the 
Mustangs at Vera Cruz, Natural Bridge, Chepultepec, Mexi- 
co, etc. — Of Wool, Kearny, Fremont, and Commodore Sloat. 
— What New Mexico and California added and subtracted. — 
The Mustang Liniment, or Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo. — 
How the Path for the Traditional Sun of Civilization West- 
ward was cut and paved. — Revolvers judicially quoted and 
applied. — Peculiar Fruit adorning the Pendulous Branches 
of Trees in New Settlements. — What the Little Trick of the 
Wizard of the South conjui-ed up. — California in 1848 and 
now contrasted. — David Wilmot raises a Ghost which dis- 
turbs several Party Feasts. — How the Polka Party broke 
up ; and how it pleased some and dissatisfied others. 

XIV. OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ON THE AMERI- 

CAN HALF-SHELL . . . . .424 

The contrasted Beginning and End of the Half-Century. — What 
America brought to the New-Year's Day of 1850 in the Raw, 
and what for the Grill of more refined Tastes. — Historical 
Stews, and their Foreign and Domestic Sauces. — What they 
were. — Attempts at, and Failures in, Insurrections in Amer- 
ica. — Mechanical Inventions of the Half-Century; Steam- 
boats,Telegraphs, Reapei-s, Sewing-Machines, etc. — Their Ad- 
vantages. — Vestments and Investments. — Of Ether. — How 
Populations drifted to Cities. — Chicago bibulous and drop- 
sical. — Public Men and their Versatile Principles. — News- 



CONTENTS. 31 

papers and their unfulfilled Prophecies. — Plutocracy. — 
Fashions and their Constancy to Change. — The Stormy Pet- 
rels of Commercial Disasters. — How Owners turn Wreckers. 
— Profits out of Losses. — Of Merchant Salvors. — The 
Effects of Gold Discoveries in California on Labor, Ladies' 
Heads and Hearts. — Auriferous Marriages. — The Spite of 
Midas against Children. — Ecclesiastical Gardens in Amer- 
ica. — The new Jlormon Shrub of the Genus Polygamous. — 
Architectural Improvements. — American Houses and their 
Sites. — Farmsteads ; their Better Complexion. — The Crops 
from the National Farms, the Sea and Land, in 1850. — 
Of American Literature, Science, Natural History, The Phi- 
losophies and other Branches of Knowledge, and their Culti- 
vators, through the Half Century. — Summary of the Bill of 
Fare for the Repast on the Half-Shell. — Its Character and 
Critics. 

XV. THE BEGINNING OF STRIFE ; OR, THE TAYLOR AND 

FILLMORE WEBBING. 1849-1853. . . 439 

The Young Polka Dancer becomes Floor Manager. — The large 
Apples of Discord emptied on the Floor of Congress. — What 
they were ; and the Pacific Trees from which thej' fell. — 
Of California, New Jlexico, and Deseret. — General Taylor's 
Death, and Mr. Fillmore's suave Manners and smooth Ap- 
peals. — Wendell Phillips and J. Davis. —Political Nurses 
and Anodynes. — Kossuth and his Short Catechism. — How 
it did not take, and how he did. — A large Piece of .Japanned 
Ware. — Deaths of Clay and Webster. — The Autumn Glory 
which they shed on a Stonny Season. 

XVL THE UNION PIERCED ; OR, PIERCE'S TURN. 

1853-1857 443 

Reference, by Believ'ers in the Transmigration of Souls, to Mr. 
Pierce for its Proof. — His real and apparent Age. — The 
Slave Colossal Figure bestrides the Presidential Harbor. — 
How the New President rode in between its Legs, and cast 
out a curious Anchor. — An Antediluvian Cabinet. — Still 
Times expected. — Sudden Freshet. — Douglas breaks the 
Missouri Dike. — Bitter Waters over the Land. — Alarm 
among the Elderly Gentlemen, and how quieted by J. 
Davis. — Alarm North and South not quieted. — The Afri- 
can Outlook towards the North Pole. — The Power of Doug- 
las illustrated from his Scotch Namesake and Proverb.— 



32 CONTENTS. 

What Warriors rushed to our Flanders. — The Blow on the 
Head of Sumner and Slavery from Brooks's Cane. — The 
Dred Scott Essays. — American Africanization. — An Ex- 
ploring Party in the Interior. — Discovery of an Extinct 
Race, and of Fremont. — Undiked Waters not strong enough 
to float Douglas into a Nomination. — Buchanan in the Dock. 
— The Know-Nothings make a neat little Present to a Polite 
Gentleman. 

XVII. COTTON-SEEDS SPROUT; OR, BUCHANAN'S AD- 
MINISTRATION. 1857-1861. . . .449 

The new Missionary Party and its Growth. — Character of Mr. 
Buchanan and his Want of Same. — Description of curious 
Drawers in his Cabinet. — The Uses of Isaac Toucey. — The 
Lecompton Constitution and how it fell together. — African 
Order of the Woolly Fleece. — The Mormon Magic-Lantern, 
and its Shows. — What Minnesota brought into the Union; 
and how a Long-fellow raised a Fall. — The War of the 
Illinois Giants— Abraham Lincoln described. — Self-made 
Men; their Self-ishness and Unsymmetrical Characters. — 
Mr. Lincoln's Growth and Character Illustrated. —Mr. Doug- 
las delineated. — Presidential Bonfires, Tar-Barrels, and 
Oratory. — A Spectre in Virginia; his Body swinging, his 
Soul marching on. — A live Coal on the Southern Heart. — 
What the Democratic Convention was asked to solve, and 
what it re-solved. Heads I win, Tails I don't lose. — Breck- 
enridge as a rare Prize-Taker. — The Missionary Party makes 
a Nomination. — New Lights and Shadows. — An original 
Recipe for threatened Political Apoplexy. — A sudden Con- 
vention in South Carolina. — Its mysterious Origin and Dark 
Ways. — A Chaotic Message. — Of different Secession Ordi- 
nances; and Want of Federal Ordnance. — Political Strikers 
described. — General Cass and a Broken Heart. — John B. 
Floyd skedaddles, chased by an Indictment. — General Ander- 
son. — Fort Sumter breaks the Cabinet. — The Confederate 
Government and Flag made. — Their Composition. — His- 
tory and Character of J. Davis. — Where Mr. Buchanan 
went ]\Iarch 4, 1861. 

XVIIL OUR NEWER NATIONAL ALBUM. . . . 464 

The Second Generation of our Great Men nearer in Time but 
not in Affection. — Several sufficient Reasons therefor. — 
Ingenious Biographers confusing our Verdicts over old 



CONTENTS. 33 

Offenders. — A Latin Quotation to prove an Original Remark. 

— Wliy we should not stick to old Opinions. — Sketches of 
Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. — Parallels do not always run 
at equal Distances. — Three Fates. — Original Anecdote of 
Webster. — Of Lewis Cass and Thomas H. Benton. — Why 
double-chinned Persons are satisfactory. — The Plutocrats 
Girard and Astor; how they made Fortunes, and how much. 

— John Marshall as a Judge, and John Trumbull as a 
Painter. — Albert Gallatin skims American Cream. — Rem- 
brandt Peale and Washington Allston described. — Why 
Felix Grundy, S. S. Prentiss, J. J. Crittenden, Samuel Hous- 
ton, D. D. Tompkins, and Others, were like Shoots grafted 
upon hardy Native Stocks. — The Senate illuminated by 
J. M. Berrian, S. L. Southard, W. C. Preston, etc., Legar6, 
and Butler. — A full-length Portrait of Winiield Scott.— 
Irving delineated. — Drake, Halleck, and Paulding. — Fen- 
imore Cooper descanted upon. — Science illustrated by 
Silliman, Hare, and Rush. — Descriptions of Prescott, Mrs. 
Sedgwick, Greenough, and Hawthorne. — How well the Sec- 
ond Set persuaded the Eighteenth Century over into the 
Nineteenth. 

XIX. THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS ; OR, LIN- 
COLN'S ADMINISTRATION. 18G1 - 1865. . 480 

IN THREE DIVISIONS. 
Division First. 
Cotton Veiis hide the Union. March 4, 1861, to January 1, 1862. 
Striking Historical Contrasts of professed Virtue and cruel En- 
forcement. — The American Fetich; its strange, passionate 
Worship and armed Adoration. — The Freshet of Slavery 
traced from its small Beginnings. — Mr. Lincoln over its 
Ridges lands in Washington. — A Striking Announcement, 
and who it struck. — Of Seward, Cameron, and Chase. — 
A Naval Joke. — A Wry Fort makes Wry Faces. — An 
American Nightmare. —Watching with the Sleeper. — Spar- 
ing the Rod and getting the Ramrod. — Call for Seventy-five 
Thousand Ramrods. — Massachusetts Boys and Baltimore 
Hards. — Busses and Blunderbusses. — Few Office-Seekers, 
but many Gun-Holders in Washington in April, 1861. — The 
English Telescope and the Wonders it discovered. —A Dual 
View.— An Official Talk between two Lords. — A Procla- 
mation to restrain Englishmen. — A Parallel. — AVar Jlateri- 
9 * 



34 CONTENTS. 

als, Forts, etc., generously given away by Loose-handed Cus- 
todians. — Twiggs inclined as Tree is bent. — Cotton Cur- 
tain before Wasliington; and a near View of it by General 
Mansfield. — Colonel Ellsworth. — Butler and Bethel. — Ly- 
ons in Missouri. — McClellan moves into Virginia; what he 
found. — A Wise Man flees when a real Man pursueth. — 
Bull's Run and General Run. — A Discovery and Noise over 
it. — Stonewall Jackson and Praying Soldiers. — Piety and 
Powder. — A Drill-Ground near Washington. — General Lee's 
First Kicks against the Pricks. — Du Pont at Port Royal. — 
Mason, Slidell, and Vigilant Friends. — John C. Brecken- 
ridge a striking Sign-Board. — War in the Mississippi Valley. 
— Kentucky and her Coy Ways. — A Spartan Leonidas and 
Greek Ulysses. — Christmas Eve, 1861. 

Division Second. 

Cotton Mixed. January 1, 1862, to Jancart 1, 1864. 

The Road to Peace. — Distance thither illustrated. — What 
certain Knights might have learned. — The Difficulties cre- 
ated by losing Battles in Kentuckj', Tennessee, Missouri, and 
Arkansas detailed. — What Grant, Thomas, Curtis, and others 
did; and what Crittenden, Zollicoffer, etc, had done unto 
them. — Whistling in the Woods. — Wonderful Story-telling 
powers of J. Davis. — How he repeated Tales with charming 
Variation. — A Sea Story in which Iron enters. — Farragut 
and Porter up the Mississippi.— Received at New Orleans 
■with Illuminations and Bonfires. — Butler deals with effer- 
vescing Materials. — The Peninsular Campaign traced.— 
Spading and Fighting. — The Glories and Disasters of the 
Army of the Potomac — The American Pope fallible.— 
Lee's Trip into Maryland. — Accidents at South Mountain 
and Antietam. — Difficult Questions besiege Mr. Lincoln in 
Washington. — His New-Year's Gift to the Slaves. — Getting 
rich on Paper. — Cotton mixed. — A Depraved Cun-ency. — 
Hooker gets at Lee's Rear at Chancellorsville. — What fol- 
lowed. — Lee at Gettysburg; gets the Advertising its Springs 
want. — The Sorrows of Vicksburg, July 4, 1863. — The Mis- 
sissippi open. — Mortar-boat Building. — Valor of Colored 
Regiments at Charleston; and of discolored Irish in New 
York. — Contrasts. — Grant Transfigured at Jlissionary Ridge 
and Look-Out Mountain without Bragging of it. 



CONTENTS. 35 

Division Third. 

Cotton Worsted. January 1, 1864, to April 14, 1865. 

What the Confederate Stool — not of Repentance, but of Mars — 
stood on, and how braced and steadied. — The Daisies and 
Corn-blooms beneath it. — The broken Industries, harried 
Life, and disrupted Ties of Unionists in the Border States. — 
Tragedies. — Grant Commander-in-Chief. — His Plan to break 
up the Nightmare. — Work ahead. — Jubal ¥.. Early and his 
Raids. — The Year of Jubal E. — Sherman at Atlanta. — 
The Southern Knob seized, and the main Door burst open. — 
An unprotecting Hood; how it was pounded and cleft. — 
Sherman's Swath through Georgia. — A Christmas Gift to 
Mr. Lincoln of a Sheaf. — The Scorpion Alabama: its Hatch- 
ing out; its slimy, wriggling Course, and sulphureous End. — 
The Iron Jaws of Mobile pried open, and its Teeth drawn. — 
Autumn Brands at the North. — Tokens of the coming Fall. 

— Andrew Johnson and the Goose. — Grant breaks Things at 
Petersburg and disturbs .T. Davis in Church at Richmond. — 
Flight of the Latter with corruptible Treasures. — Negro 
Troops enter Richmond. — Light Suggestions thereupon. — 
A Meeting at Appomattox Coiirt-House. — Leaving bloody 
Instructions, Lee goes to College. — J. Davis in Court and his 
Sentence. — A Thunder-Clap and its Victim. — Death of 
Abraham Lincoln. 

XX. VELOCIPEDAL. . . . . . .516 

How mixed Blood effervesces. — Of the Causes and Develop- 
ments of American Fastness. — Unrest in Prisons and at 
Home. — Time lost in Sleep, etc. — The distressing HuiTy of 
Brains. — Compressing a Cow in a Milk-Pot. — Of Doctors' 
Gigs and Apoplectic Whirligigs. — American Stomachs con- 
sidered. — A general Stomachy how employed and hii-ed out. 

— Doctors' Bills. — Clothes Wringers and State Wringers. — 
*' Speedy Trials " secured. — The Common and Un-common 
Law of the United States considered at length. — Of Dower, 
and how taken. — Property administered before Death. — 
Heirs cheated. — Injunctions used. — Illinois Divorces. — Of 
Prohibited Degrees of Marriage. — Of Fat People and Ser- 
vants. — Boarding-Houses and Hotels. — American Trade and 
its Feats at diminishing Quantities. — - Fast Americans in 
Europe. — How they overcome Distances, History, and 
Landlords. — The Paris Genus. 



36 CONTENTS. 

XXI. PUZZLES AND CROSS READINGS; OR, JOHNSON'S 
ENTERTAINMENTS. APRIL 14, 1865, TO MARCH 4, 
1869 526 

Puzzles about Hemp and Paper. — Weak Brains at rest. — 
The Return of the Holders of Sabres and Gnns. — Our Dead. — 
Fighters become Workers. — A Modern Sisyphus rolls a Stone 
up Hill. — How it rolled back. — The Interpretation by Con- 
gress of its own Rights. — Southern Delegates declined. — 
Puzzles solved. — Vetoing made easy. — The New Orleans 
Riots. — The Zig-zag Journey, of the President to the Tomb 
of Douglas. — The Fenian Republic in Union Square. — The 
Sham-rock compared with other Rocks. — The French Moths 
in ]Mexico ; and how they were singed. — Amnesties and 
Pardons. — Scriptui-e outdone. — Forgiveness forced upon 
the Unrepenting. — Results of Congressional Reconstruction. 
— The President tried and one found wanting. — Value of one 
Vote. — Alaska and St. Thomas. — Chicago, unalarmed, goes 
on dis-pairing but not despairing. — The NaiTow Escapes of 
New York. — Fiske-Ville. — Johnson gets Mudd out of the 
Dry Tortugas. 



XXn. TAKEN FOR GRANTED; OR, WHAT IS EXPECT- 
ED OF GRANT AND THE AMERICAN FUTURE. 
MARCH 4, 1869, TO 534 

The supposed Difficulties of writing History in advance con- 
sidered, and the Popular Delusions on the Subject disposed 
of. — Lively Expectations of what our future Presidents, Cabi- 
net Members, Foreign Ministers, etc., etc., will be and do. — 
What Citizens will be exempt from Executing and Garroting 
the Laws. — The Public Debt to disappear. — The Ways con- 
sidered. — Cut up into Dividends and no more heard of. — 
What is expected of Common Schools and Sunday Schools in 
improving Public Men and their Speeches. — Certain Occu- 
pations to be dispensed with. — The Uses to which their 
Pursuers are to be put. — Improvements in Judges, Injunc- 
tions, and Court-Houses. — Extension of Efforts of Society for 
preventing Cruelty to Animals, to Employers, etc. — Woman's 
Rights discussed from various Aspects. — Men and Women 
equal, — especially Women. — How any Differences between 
them are to be disposed of. — How Children are to be utilized 
before they get to be Twenty-one and lose their Activities. — 
The new Arts and Sciences to be taught. — Secretary of the 



CONTENTS. 3,7 

Treasury to regnlate the Fashions, and how. — The President 
and Sunday Schools. —All Mining to be transferred to Wall 
Street. — Advance Sheets of Reports for 1969. — What our 
Railway System is to be. — Grumbling and Patriotism. — Of 
the Future of Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Bos- 
ton. — A Pax Vobiscum. 



THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE 
UNITED STATES. 




Columbus discovers America. 



THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE 
UNITED STATES. 



PREFATORY. 

TREATING THE READER TO AN ACCOUNT OF THE AUTHOR, 
AND OF THE PLAN, OBJECT, AND PRINCIPLES OF THIS 
HISTORY. 

The Author, proposing to be intimate with the Reader, deems an Intro- 
duction desirable. — Born Early and Poor. — How the Two Facts were 
managed and overcome. — School Days and Nights. — College Lines, 
crooked and straight. — Father's Face against his. — A New American 
Decalogue. — Into the Married and other States and Territories. — 
Settling down. — Advantages of a Sub-urban Residence. — Outside and 
Inside Views of the Author's Head. — Plans and Purposes of the 
Work. — Laughing Facts. — Roman Precedents. — Impartiality holding 
the Shears and Tape. — Sources of our Information. — Acknowledg- 
ments to Smith and Brown. — Our Illustrations. 



UE it is alike to the 
originality and dig- 
nity of this work, and 
to the respectability, 
comfort, and good 
understanding of the 
reader and ourself, 
that a formal intro- 
duction should take 
place at the very out- 
set. 

For although we 
feel sure that without 




The Reader scrapes Acquaintance 
WITH THE Author. 



42 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

this we sliall, after keeping company together a few 
evenings, exchange confidences and hearts witli eacli 
other for life, yet to avoid needless suspicions, — 
mute and silent though they be, — and to obviate 
the hazards and discomforts of injurious side-glances, 
interrogative of my origin, person, parentage, educa- 
tion, and moral character, — which the ^3a^c?/a?>ii7ia5 
may, and naturally would, cast upon a new teacher, 
who offers to take a place in his household, sit in 
one corner of the family room when the lamps are 
lit, and to sleep in the spare bedroom when they 
are turned down, — I propose to state at once who 
it is that comes with this friendly audacity, what 
are his intentions, and how he expects to behave 
himself in a relation at once so familiar and respon- 
sible, viz. that of a good-natured, equable, humorous 
companion and friend, indicating and painting facts 
in a pleasant, genial, and healthy way. 

First, then, as to ourself. I say not myself; for 
this would be to roll immediately my complex egoism 
out of the manifold garments which a historian wears 
of course ; but I say Ourself, that gathered, round 
Impersonation which may be well supposed to be a 
crystallized something, like a cunning frost-work on 
the long window-panes of history, — an armless hand 
writing Mene and other hieroglyphics on the wall, 
or a Briareus with his hundred hands, heads, and feet, 
running in a hundred different ways, staring through 
a hundred telescopes at the calm ages, and writing 
with a century of hands the doings, undoings, and 
misdoings of the race. This manifold, dignified mys- 
tery I mean to put on and wear after this chapter ; but 



PREFATORY. 43 

in order to insure the confidence which I now seek, I 
shall slip, for a few minutes, ont of my state gear, and 
taking your hand, — now no longer withheld nor even 
hesitatingly given, — look trustingly into your eyes, 
and mention a few of those particulars of myself, 
which you have a gracious right to know, in order to 
judge of my standing in the world, my intellectual 
competency and fitness, and the plumptitude of my 
moral proportions. 

I was born very early in life ; so early, in fact, that 
although present, and making such an effort as befitted 
my first appearance, I was so inexpressibly interested 
in the matter, that I forgot my future office, that of 
recorder of passing events. The fact of my birth — a 
fact wliich is apt to happen to most people — is not 
perhaps so singular as that, being born in the United 
States, I contrived to live beyond the first five years, 
that fatal semi-decade. I ought, perhaps, now to add, 
in order to quiet any apprehensions after my last 
alarming remark, that " I still live " ; and that, having 
survived the perils and plums of parental kindness in 
infancy, I hope to outlive the equally fatal neglect and 
indifference which marks our treatment of old age. 

My parents, at the time I was given to the world, 
were poor, and, therefore, not respectable. They had 
been simple enough to marry young, and for love ; and 
although they had mated each other well, they had 
failed to put a yoke upon the neck of fortune. These 
early struggles, however, stiffened in them the moral 
elements, and marbleized, so to speak, the soft woods 
of their country natures, making a substance very dif- 
ferent from that thin, moral veneering which is uphol- 



44 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

stered from the beeclien groves that timber the sunny- 
slopes of life. Both of them were Presbyterians ; 
always attending the Sunday services, sitting in a gal- 
lery seat, close to the pulpit, and so taking the brunt 
of the hard blows which were rightfully felt in, and — 
I sometimes thought — spent themselves upon, our 
uncushioned pew. 

An offer from my father's brother, who had become 
rich in mercantile business, drew my father and the 
family in my fifth year to the city of Philadelphia. 
With this change of base came sharper tactics against 
the army of poverty ; and at last, by fighting it on the 
same line, although it took all the summer of his life, 
he achieved the victory. I was then sent to the best 
schools ; took lessons at home in some branches from 
a private teacher ; took — I own it now — lessons in 
other branches privately, out of the house, without my 
father's knowledge, although at his expense for the 
tuition ; and at last I went to college. 

Hard study, matched by an irrepressible love of 
pranks at night; a knowledge of Euclid's lines and 
clothes line ; of belles-lettres and unlettered belles ; 
of geometrical and other squares ; of chemistry applied 
to known uses and to experiments for \vhich there 
were no precedents in the books ; prizes offered by the 
faculty, and prizes offered by Mrs. Green and Mrs, 
White in the persons of their handsome daughters, — 
these all braided together the threads of my university 
life into a pattern which, if not unusual, was made up 
principally of figures little admired at home. 

Mj father was not at all pleased with the well-red 
bill I brought with me, and quite as little with the 



PREFATORY. 45 

unsigned ones which followed me, from college ; and, 
concluding that I might run my own face for a while, 
set his sharply against me. 

I took to teaching ; sounding over again the shallow 
depths of old studies, but often striking the lead on 
the rocky bottom of a temper too long indulged not to 
be stern when touched by children's thoughtlessness. 

My father's death cast upon me responsibilities for 
my mother and the estate, which droj)ped the curtain 
upon my dream-life, and lifted it from the long per- 
spective of actual work and business cares. Among 
my father's papers I found the following original docu- 
ment, which I reproduce here, as showing his shrewd- 
ness of observation, and the character of the parent 
who helped to form some elements of my own. 

"A ISTew American Decalogue. 

" Hear, Jonathan, the commandments which thou 
hast made, — teaching them to thy infants, thy Freed- 
men, thy Irishmen, thy office-holders, — the asses 
within thy gates. 

I. 

" Thou shalt have no other God but Gain. Trade, 
and labor, husband-ry and all other brokerage, shall 
be his profits. 

II. 

" Graven images and pictures other than greenbacks 
and fractional currency thou slialt not make. 

" These shalt continue to be unlike anything else- 
where, in the heavens above or in the earth beneath ; 
and to them, therefore, thou mayst bow down thyself 



46 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

unto the thirty-third or thirty-fourth generation, using 
up in their pursuit all thy soles, thy health, and thy 
neighbor as thyself. 

III. 

" Thou shalt not mistake any other god for the afore- 
said, such as Keligion, True Worship, Charity, Virtue, 
Obedience, Truth ; for Gain, being a jealous God, re- 
quires all your time, strength, health, soul, and body, 
and will show no mercy upon those who keep not his 
day-book, ledger, and cash-books. 

IV. 

" Eemember the Sabbath day to keep it wholly to 
thyself. 

V. 

" Honor thy children, bowing down to them and 
worshipping them, giving them what they least re- 
quire, that their days may be the shortest, in the 
United States, of all lands whatsoever. 

VI. 

" Thou shalt not kill the goose which lays the golden 
eggs. 

VII. 

" Thou shalt commit adulterations with almost ev- 
erything in the earth beneath, and especially by the 
waters which are throughout the world. 

VIII. 

" Thou shalt steal whenever an official opportunity 
offers. 



PREFATORY. 47 

" Making a Caesar of thyself, thou shalt render unto 
him all the money that is brought unto thee. 

IX. 

" Thou shalt forbear all witness against thy neigh- 
bor ; lest thy time be consumed needlessly in the pub- 
lic service, and he afterwards, also, witness against 
thee. 

X. 

" Thou shalt acquire so much by the foregoing com- 
mandments, as not to covet thy neighbor's house and 
lot, nor any other real or un-real estate of his whatso- 
ever." 

Settling up the property which my father had ac- 
cumulated, although disregarding this code, and unset- 
tling myself, I roamed abroad long and widely ; prac- 
tically dog-earing in Europe, Asia, and Africa the 
leaves of that illuminated volume of travel w^hich I 
had all my life been intent to own. 

Then came marriage, — religious convictions, — 
studying for the ministry, — children in the house, 

— studying them, and how to feed them, — ordina- 
tion, — a call to a rus-urban congregation in the 
vicinity of New York, — only a short hour's ride on a 
rail, and well feathered, without tar, by plentiful dust, 

— preaching to an assemblage, gathered from behind 
sharp counters on \veek-days, to measure my dis- 
courses critically, and to secure their money's worth on 
Sundays, — and all the nameless little experiences 
that roll over the cog-wheels of a suburban parson's 
life. Two bronchial attacks commissioned me to look 



48 THE COMIC fflSTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

tip a better throat, — once in a journey to South 
America, and once across the prairies to California. 

These experiences, added to their predecessors, have 
accumulated, with my readings, the materials for a 
history which the leisure half-hours, paragraphed be- 
tween the compact duties of my thirty years of min- 
isterial work, have permitted me to put together, and 
which now, dear reader, I place, as my cor cordium, 
in your hands. 

It is the cream, skimmed from my carefully kept 
dairy ; or rather the condensed milk of my very 
being, left at your door, to make your tea pleasanter, 
and your pudding sweeter and richer. 

As you may be curious to possess, and I am most 
happy of an opportunity to get off my latest photo- 
gram, I add, as an item serving to assist you in mak- 
ing up the sum of my qualifications, this 




External View of the Author's Head, 



bare-ly remarking that as its unfurnished state may 
disappoint you, I will endeavor to restore your pleas- 
ing illusion, by giving you gratuitously 



PREFATORY. 



49 




An Inside View, 



flattering myself that, although you may find nothing 
in it, you will at least confess, that seldom dare an 
author venture upon such an exposure of his stock in 
trade. 

Having now furnished all the main elements which 
will enable my pupil readers to outline my intellectual 
portraiture, having frankly shown four sides of my- 
self, — a lower side and an upper side, an outside and 
inside, — being the only sides, I trust, that I shall 
take in this history, I crave leave now to add, 
secondly, a word as to the plan, object, and principles 
of this history. They are, in brief, to put facts, verita- 
ble and authentic facts, whether agreeable or dis- 
agreeable in themselves, in that pleasing dress that 
will make them welcome visitors to the drawing-room, 
good chums in the bedchamber, chatty companions in 
tlie cars, on steamers and steamboats, jolly physicians 

3 D 



50 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

to the dyspeptically lean, and pleasantly wise counsel- 
lors to the troubled. 

I feel so sure that, as not one of the illuminated 
readers of these chronicles has ever mistaken dulness 
for wisdom, so not one will need be reminded that the 
most solid and trusted truths may wear the smiles of 
joy and hilarity. 

The Romans on their solemn festival days were 
wont to carry in their processions the images of their 
ancestors, even those long deceased, wreathed with 
flowers. So carry we the images of the Past, gar- 
landed with the rosy links of fun and jollity. 

We shall not be tempted by the lure of originality, 
nor even by the attractive ambition of gaining credit 
for profound critical and historical acumen, to follow 
the late fashion of dressing up stale and unwholesome 
characters in fine clothes and qualities. We shall 
neither foist the virtuous regimentals and well-earned 
epaulettes -of Wasliington upon Benedict Arnold, nor 
tease history to fling a mantle of false charity over 
Burr's treason. We shall not worry the public con- 
science into any praise, however faint, of the crimson 
waistcoat of Mr. Jefferson Davis, nor waste any admi- 
ration upon the spotted neck-tie, perhaps too loosely 
drawn, of Jacob Thompson. Impartial justice shall 
hold our tape and handle our shears. 

It is usual for historians to indicate the sources of 
their information ; but as we have refused no means 
of enriching these annals, using for that purpose what- 
ever materials our multiform reading could supj)ly, from 
the Ramayana, the great Sanscrit epic, impressed on 
wax, down to the last published child's primer, printed 



PREFATORY. 51 

on patented wooden paper, we could not name all our 
authorities without giving a catalogue inconvenient 
for our publishers, and too long for the abridged lives 
of our readers. We cannot, however, refrain from 
acknowledging our obligations to John Smith, Esq., 
for original information, novel ideas, and new turns 
of thought around old notions, running through every 
page of this history; to Mr. Jones, for valuable 
public documents ; and to Mr. Brown, the well-known 
sexton of Grace Church, New York, who in the course 
of his lifelong diggings, has exhumed several pieces 
of Americans, whom we have reconstructed and pre- 
served in our historical cases. 

As to the illustrations which flash upon and light 
up our pages, they will speak for themselves ; if they 
do not, any word of ours would be, Vox ef preterea 
nihil. 



BOOK FIRST. 

DISCOVERIES. 
B. C. TO 1607 A. D. 



' Through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns." 

Tennyson. 



" Here are old trees, tall oaks and gnarled pines 
That stream with gray, green mosses ; here the ground 
Was never touched by spade, and flowers spring up 
Unsown and die ungathered. It is sweet 
To linger here among the flitting birds 
And leaping squirrels, wandering brooks, and winds 
That shake the leaves and scatter as they pass 
A fragrance from the cedars thickly set 
With pale blue berries. In their peaceful shades, 
Peaceful, unpruned, immeasurably old. 
My thoughts go up the long, dim path of years 
Back to the earliest days." 

Bbtant. 



" That would be wooed and not unsought be won." 

Shakespeake. 



CHAPTEE I. 

OF AMEEICA BEFORE ITS DISCOVERY IN THE FIFTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

B. C. — 1000 A. D. 

America older than Europe, Asia, or Africa. — Chronic Errors on the 
Subject. — Europe presented to America. — Truth vindicated. — 
Proofs of our Superior Antiquity. — Luxurious Civilization of the 
Races who stocked this Continent before the Lidians. — Amount of 
Coal left by them unburned. — Large supplies of Fish packed away 
safely in our Mountains. — Fish Culture Measure of Human Culture. 
— Fossil Cran-iology. — Laughable Blunders of Former Historians 
and Etlmologists. — Ancient Nations, Babylonian, Assj'rian, Persian, 
Greek, Ten Lost Tribes, etc., trickling through, appearing on this 
Side of the Earth. — Instances cited. — Mythologies of Greece and 
Rome originated here. — Proofs and Reproofs. — American Nests well 
feathered Ages ago. — Large Stocks for Future Use. 




H 



ITHEETO not 

only foreign 
wiiters, but even our 
own people, have ig- 
nored the existence 
of America prior to 
what is popularly 
called its discovery, 
a phenomenon which 



1^. ^-^ might be more appro- 



r i.'*,\;U'' JJI^'' '' priately denominated 



America before its Discovery. 



a return of the de- 
scendants of the old 
stock to the haunts of their forefathers. That event 



56 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

— reserved until the close of the fifteenth century of 
the Christian era^ after the invention of gunpowder 
had exploded numerous obstructions in the path of 
progress, and just before the Lutheran Reformation 
came in with its fresh needs for more room — turned 
up an Old World for new uses. 

Of course the newly ventilated space thus redis- 
covered excited much talk at the time, and created 
a sensation in that unsensational age. The first Eu- 
ropeans who were presented to America were as much 
elated, as Americans now at their presentation to 
European courts ; hs if America, like those courts, 
had not existed and had not had its shows, jewels, 
follies, liistory, and fetes, centuries before they were 
shown up to it. Has not this sensation lasted quite 
long enough ? Is it not time — now that nearly four 
hundred years have allowed the first ardor and sur- 
prise to cool off — to vindicate the claim of the 
Western Continent against the long-suffered error of 
mistaking what they were new to for what was itself 
new ? 

The arrogant pretensions of what is pleased to call 
itself the Old World have quite long enough kept 
back our bashful and blushing claims. 

Indeed, in our chronic modesty, we are allowing 
our country to get- somewhat mature in speaking of 
itself as new; while even children now know that 
ours is, in fact, the elder continent. Agassiz is not 
gassing us when he picks our ancient Alleghany flints 
and tells us, that the camp-fires in the Lackawanna, 
Schuylkill, and Lehigh valleys blazed away long 
before those at Newcastle and in the English Black 



AMERICA BEFORE ITS DISCOVERY. 57 

Country were lit up. The Eocky Mountains got up 
their vertebrated backs ages before Mont Blanc put 
on such cool airs and carried its head so loftily over 
the more modest chignon of our Orizaba and Long's 
Peak. The Mississippi got down to its delta long 
before the Ehone or Ehine reached even their alpha. 
Let us then henceforth assert the dignity of our 
superior antiquity; and commisserate the other half 
of the globe in being so long unknown to our older 
America. 

What was the precise height, the fashionable color 
of hair and eyes, the modish vices, the sartorial 
virtues, of the races wliich stocked our prairies, and 
hunted plesiosauria, and megalosauria, and other tall 
game along our wide valleys, and across the granite 
peaks of our long mountain ranges, we have not now 
at hand any plates or photographs to show ; but well 
do we know that we are very much obliged to them 
for leaving unburned such lots of good coal, snugly 
stowed away in dry, ample cellars ; and that those 
cellars were placed in such a peaceable Quaker State 
as Pennsylvania, where Ave can go and help ourselves 
by the cart-load without getting into a stew. How 
beautifully, too, they — ^^ those young Americans — 
packed away their fish; so well that they — the fish 
— are now just as fresh as when Noah performed his 
■ maritime adventure, Moses was fished up by the 
banks of the Nile, or Jonah became cargo in the deeply 
laden whale. 

What large provisions those jolly dwellers on this 
hemisphere, long ages ago, must have made, when we 
find such abundance of funny finny things, so care- 



58 THE COMIC HISTOEY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

fully stowed away in layers, all over the continent, 
from tlie icy plains around the North Pole, down 
through the Isthmus belt, and along the saw-shaped 
ridges of South America, to the farthermost cape. 
Now, if we had no other proof of the high civilization, 
we may truthfully say, the dainty and luxurious 
refinement, of those pre-Columbian inhabitants of this 
hemisphere, the existence of these fish, so beautifully 
canned, — better disposed, in fact, than if they had 
been arranged in layers by the accomplished herring- 
packers of Scotland or Holland, — we might safely 
rest there the Avell-digested argument ; knowing well, 
as all our readers do, that the love of fish was one of 
the peculiar features that marked the highest point 
of Ass}aian, Egyptian, and Persian civilization ; re- 
meinbering that in the time of Pericles, the pol- 
ished Athenian left the charming music of his flow- 
ing speech, when he heard the bell in the Agora an- 
nounce that the fish auction had be^un ; and further 
recalling the fact tliat the fish-ponds of Lucul- 
lus, Pompey, Crassus, and the millionnaire Ptomans, 
gauged, like yard-sticks, the intellectual cultm-e of 
Eome. 

Fossil cranes have also been found ingeniously 
tucked away in appropriate crusts, — a cran-iological 
development not to be overlooked ; although upon this 
head we forbear to enlarge. The Hadrosaurus — now 
restored to us by strangely unsubstantial Water-house 
Hawkins — shows that in his (i. e. the former H.'s) 
production what countless ages must have been ex- 
hausted and for his sustenance what numberless lives 
consumed, which, if unslaughtered, might have gone 



AMERICA BEFORE ITS DISCOVERY. 



59 




CO THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

on, and after centuries of growth developed to be not 
only men, but even American voters. 

" Perhaps in scaly armor, up and down those ancient seas, 
Roamed he with an appetite that nothing could appease ; 
Crushing shoals and hosts of being, every one of whom that ran 
Would, in course of time and season, have developed up to man ; 
But /ata sic jyrofulgent, and we only may bewail 
Our dear relations slaughtered when this monster curled his tail." 

From what has already been said it is clear that 
many of the aboriginal settlers in this haK of the 
world died game to the last. 

After mention of these higher arguments of our 
elder civilization, we shall not weaken the proofs by 
an exhibition of later American antiquities, such as 
the sculptured temples found in Yucatan and Central 
America ; the time-coated, swalloAv-tailed fanes of the 
Pervivians ; the exaggerated structures of the dwarfed 
Aztecs ; or the tall earth-movmds wliich, scattered 
from Lake Erie through the Mississippi Valley, and 
forced through the tight-set lips of the Isthmus, are 
at last swallowed up by Venezuela. 

Many doubtless are tlie swarms that have hived 
here through the busy centuries which preceded the 
Egyptian Pharaohs, the comparatively modern empires 
of Assyria, Persia, and China, and the still later king- 
doms of Agamemnon and Priam ; empires and king- 
doms that stand on the dim frontis-pages of our ordi- 
nary histories. These hives, overflowing their quar- 
ters, have sent out superfluous swarms across the ice 
bridge over our northern strait into the plains of Asia, 
and thence into Africa and Europe. 

Laughable indeed is the exhibition which erudite 



AMERICA BEFORE ITg DISCOVERY. 61 

European historians, ethnologists, and others have 
made of themselves in deducing from Asia, as the 
mother-swarm, the colonies that have peopled the 
world ; when in truth Asia was only the half-way 
house, the luncheon-place of our trampers, on their 
march into their foggy countries and chronicles. 

Thus it is now ascertained by late researches that 
there is a great resemblance between the languages 
of the Mongols and Japanese, and those, of Equador 
and New Granada. Hopes are entertained that anti- 
quarians may discover some ancient precedents for our 
Yankee tongues and words derived from sources whose 
authoritative beginnings now puzzle us. 

So, too, no doubt, migrations homeward have taken 
place from the faded and colorless scenes of these 
exploring raids. 

Hitherward trickled, probably, the ten Israelitish 
tribes, hitherto supposed to be lost, diffusing them- 
selves wanderingly for the past two thousand five 
hundred and eighty-nine years, and now collecting 
in pools in our towns and cities, and around our stock- 
exchanges. 

Here, too, have reappeared, after going in on the 
other side, the broken pieces of the empire of Nine- 
veh, mixed up with fragments of its gates of brass, 
which fused in the transmission, have veneered the 
faces of those who pulled through, forming in their 
descendants the race of brazen-faced itinerant pedlers, 
auctioneers, and jjlumbers among us. 

So the ancient empire of Egypt, shivered up by 
Ccssar, percolating tlirough, at last dripped into that 
stalagmite, the Tombs of New York, with its newly 



62 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

formed but not reformed Caesars and Pompeys in- 
side. 

In a word, most of the old kingdoms, and even 
cities, such as Troy, Eome, Syracuse, Alexandria, 
Macedon, Athens, Sparta, and others, disappearing 
from sight on the other and newer hemisphere, and 
straining through into ours, have come out on our 
side condensed by the pressure in small spots, but 
with similar- names, — spots smaller but just as smart 
and big-feeling as their larger selves. This, too, ac- 
counts for our sudden expansions, whether in crinohne 
or credit ; the compressed and squeezed germ reassert- 
ing often its chance for pristine greatness in sudden 
and unexpected ways. 

Now that we have started the train of thought, each 
of our readers can easily turn engineer and stoker, and 
by applying a little fuel of his own, can drive it over 
all the various tracks which run from his metropolitan, 
central brain. 

" No wonder," each one will exclaim, " that our 
people are so thin after so much pressing of their 
ancestors ; no wonder at our new-minted words, the 
old ones having been fused at a red heat in the cen- 
tral fires." 

Here, too, is the secret of our burning eloquence. 
This is the source of our extraordinary architecture, 
borrowed, like an actor's costume at a fancy ball, from 
huddled heaps of clothing made for others, and brought 
together in party-colored, but ill-sorted union. Looked 
at from this angle, we can account, too, for our mytho- 
logical tendencies, — the invocations to Jove, when 
surprised ; the devotion to Apollo in our magazines ; 



AMERICA BEFORE ITS DISCOVERY. 63 

the frequent use of the lyre in our trade ; the love for 
bare shoulders, like Junos, in our divine assemblages ; 
our leaninfTs at night to Bacchus ; and other customs 
and habits that creep out even from under pan-taletes. 
Greece at first took her Olympus from us ; and we 
in the course of time have, like affectionate parents, 
borroAved it back again. 

From these varied proofs it is manifest that, before 
Columbus brought over to America specimens of the 
European stock existing in his time, our hemi- 
sphere had been hard at work firing up at Popocate- 
petl ; scooping out harbors on our coasts ; creasing our 
valleys in fluvial grooves for our fast-running craft and 
boats ; feathering the future nests of a later posterity 
with materials for use ; and in general laying in a large 
stock for a successful business to be taken iip and 
carried on afterwards by those who should come back 
from their migrations to become large dealers in uni- 
versal notions, general purveyors, forwarders and ad- 
vancers on all kinds of property, from continents to a 
spool of cotton, from polar Alaska ice to West India 
warming-pans and peppery troches. 

How long it took them to flutter back to these old 
deserted nests, how many were lost before they had 
fairly got settled in them, and what broods now chirp, 
sing, and crow, through branches new and old, honest 
or brittle, these pages are full fledged to show. 



CHAPTER II. 

OF THE DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA DURING THE ELEVENTH, 
FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 

1000 - 1607. 

America not discovered by Jason. — Lithogi-aphic Specimens attributed 
to the Northmen in the Eleventh Century curious, but by Skalds 
more Modern. — Bishop Berkeley's Western Star not the First 
American Constellation. — Columbus offers a Continent at Private 
Sale ; Isabella, a Spanish Lad}--, takes him up, and the Profits also. — 
Of Ferdinand's Necklace. — Price of Eggs advanced in Spain. — Eng- 
land finally sees Something. — A Fish Story confirmed. — Discoveries 
which Columbus did not make. — Ponce de Leon. — Mexico unfortu- 
nately discovered. — The Straits of Magellan and other Straits. — De 
Soto at the Bottom of the Mississippi. — Champlain, a wise Man, 
founds Quebec upon a Rock. — Sir Walter Raleigh and him smoking. 
^— The JMayflower anchored. — Hudson up Stream. 

AMEEICA was not discovered by Jason while 
looking up the golden fleece, although the ex- 
istence of many American habits point to an origi- 
nator, whose name is lost, but whose Asiatic practices 
are not. It is supposed by some that the late war 
crops were the product of certain stray dragon's teeth, 
possibly dropped by that wily Greek on our prolific 
soil. But these hypotheses, although as wise as many 
others connected with early maritime discoveries, are 
too learned to be useful. History declines to pull 
such wool over the eyes of its readers or to encourage 
traditions which flatter the pride of ancient nations, 
whose age is the only excuse for their fond, grand- 



LATER DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA. 65 

fatherly dotings. Nor is it any more true that the 
Northmen, in the eleventh centmy, fell upon this out- 
lying continent, when engaged in general lithography 
along our coasts, — the j)ictured rocks near Taunton, 
although a spirited illustration of one page of our 
chronicles, being now proved to be sketches by later 
Scandinavian Skalds, less than eight hundred years 
old. We also feel obliged to deny the merit accorded 
by some to Bishop Berkeley, of having made the first 
discovery of America. This notion of some rests all 
its weight on the strength of those lines, "Westward 
the star of empire takes its way." But those were 
not the first lines that were carried ashore and made 
fast to our continent, nor this the earliest star which 
appeared over our American boards. 

Much as we should love, in the interest of modern 
historical research, to invent a new discoverer for 
America, candor compels us to award the glory still to 
Christopher Columbus. Had he lived three hundred 
and seventy-seven years later, he would have adver- 
tised for a partner in some paper of wide circulation ; 
but not having that advantage, he circulated himself, 
offering a continent at private sale to all European 
nations that fronted the sunset. But all declined 
with thanks, until at last, as is well known, one 
Isabella, a Spanish lady, taken with the speculation, 
became a silent partner in the business. She not 
only furnished the capital, and took a high interest 
in the result, but finally reaped nearly all the profits, 
— a pleasant example of woman's rights thoroughly 
enforced. She even took a necklace from her neck to 
procure funds for the expedition; and with this ex- 



66 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




LATER DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA. 67 

ample before liim, her associate Ferdinand, after trying 
his hand on several Moors, thought that, after unclasp- 
ing from the neck of Columbus " the gem of the 
Antilles," he could substitute a chain less golden. 
Posterity, however, indignantly breaking the metallic 
hasp, has clapped the iron collar back on the neck of 
the selfish, cunning, and thankless Ferdinando. 

We must not foroet to mention that before the old 
pilot could get his project to stand, he had raised the 
price of eggs throughout Spain by placing so many on 
their own poor broken heads. For this destruction, 
however, he consoled himself with the maxim, " all 's 
well that ends well." He carried his eggs and hopes 
to England, France, Portugal, and Navarre ; but both 
were kept so long that they became addled. 

A heavy fog prevented England at first from seeing 
the enterprise ; but after the discovery of real land 
was made, she lost no time in procuring the advan- 
tages of it, and endeavored to secure them to herself, 
by allowing several vessels to be outfitted at Bristol. 

These vessels were not built by Laird ; but, sailing 
away on the blind side of the island, succeeded at last 
in boarding the continent, and exchanging some im- 
printed religious tracks for certain other tracts, after- 
wards well stamped by royal authority. 

On their return, the promoters of this missionary 
enterprise built a handsome church, where prayers 
were daily offered for many years, for past success, 
and intercessions made for the interposition of the 
same kind Providence for new exchanges of a similar 
Idnd. These expeditions, it may be remarked, have 
been and are the foundation of England's greatness. 



68 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 







LATER DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA. 69 

— her church and her trade; or rather to name them 
in juster order and according to her own estimate, her 
trade and her church. The Cabots, father and son, 
will ever be remembered by their addition to the 
world's wealth by the discovery, in 1497, of New- 
foundland. At the time it was thought to be a story 
somewhat fishy, but it is now swallowed without any 
bones. 

The Portuguese were less fortunate, their ships hav- 
ing got somehow entangled in the line in crossing it, 
they were obliged to cast anchor against a high wind, 
which as usual was not so ill as not to benefit their 
English rivals. What became of these ships is not 
positively knowTi ; a glimpse of only one of th6m hav- 
ing since been obtained in Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 
The rest may have drifted northwards, and their 
masts made to sferve to splice the north pole, the old 
one having become somewhat loose from being so 
much worked about by meddlesome navigators. 

Among the discoveries in America which Columbus 
did not make we may enumerate the following : — 

First, a name for the continent ; an omission after- 
wards supplied by a shabby coimtryman of his, whose 
own name we will not perpetuate by mentioning in 
this history. 

Second, iron-clads ; although he did come across 
some very hard characters, whose scaly armor history 
has ever since been mercilessly denting and battering. 
Columbus himself, although at one time cased in iron, 
and sent home on a trial trip, while he learned the 
value and preciousness of metal at the Spanish court, 
failed to discover its property to float him across seas 



70 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

successfully. Nor do we find any warrant for believ- 
ing that he was the discoverer of, 

Third, balsam of liverwort, the extract of buchu, 
Peruvian hair-dye, or the sozodont, notwithstanding 
the strenuous assertions to the contrary of the candid 
proprietors of those invaluable preparations. The 
only extract he succeeded in making was a promise of 
lionors, never performed, although highly labelled ; and 
it is well known that the only color he succeeded in 
obtaining in America, for his own hair, was gray. 
From the ingredients of this blanching powder he 
ultimately died himself at Valladolid. 

■Fourth, nor is there any better foundation for 
the common error, that he was the discoverer of the 
Tammany Society, and furnished designs and colored 
drawings for the wigwam, in which the Democratic 
braves find so many original and aboriginal voters. 
Indian polls, from which the hair had been carefully 
removed, he did see, and even took a few back with 
him to Spain ; but it is needless to say that these 
polling-places were not the exemplars of those whicli 
Tammany so often and so lovingly pats on the head. 

Fifth, equally erroneous is the general belief that 
he discovered "Hail Columbia," although it is true 
that lie got enough of it, in the sense that some illy 
educated small boys now use that phrase. 

Ponce de Leon, following up the discoveries of 
Columbus, landed in Florida, in 1512, and endeav- 
ored to find there a fountain possessing the properties 
of giving to the imbiber perpetual youth. Although 
he did not succeed in this quest, it seems probal)le 
that some one else did, for it is well known that sev- 



LATER DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA. 



71 




72 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

eral Americans, such as Daniel Webster, John C. 
Calhoun, and others, have lived quite too long, while 
other distinguished Americans, as Burr and others, 
have manifested in a very lively way a green old age, 
cutting up capers which none but very young people 
would have thought of. He also discovered the Dry 
Tortugas, — a temperance station of the first water, 
famous as the habitation of Dr. Mudd. 
.^ A few years later, A. D. 1517, Mexico was unfor- 
tunately discovered, and from that time to the pres- 
ent has been the scene of constant embroihnents, 
beginning with the broiling of Montezuma, by Cortez, 
and ending with the unhappy stew made by Maxi- 
milian for himself. Mexico is the American abattoir, 
— the general slaughter-house of our continent. Ice 
for the preservation of the quarters of her victims, 
where no quarter was shown, is obtained from the ele- 
vated plains into which the country is as yet insuf- 
ficiently broken up. 

"We ought to mention the voyage, in 1520, of a 
Portuguese, Magellan by name, who touclied at the 
Canaries for yellow birds, coasted along the shores 
of Brazil in search of other golden products, but 
finally brought up in a very tight place, on the ex- 
treme southern tip of our western globe ; calling the 
spot, under great pressure, the Straits of Magellan. 

He became so exhilarated, however, at Cape Horn, 
that he kept on, like the man with the cork leg, and 
went all around the world, being its first circumventor, 
and giving the first proof of the gyrating effects of mix- 
ing liquors with water. 

De Soto first chanced upon the Mississippi Eiver, 



LATER DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA.' 73 

and, in 1542, was flung upon it with all his heavy 
armor on, — "a sink-or-s\vim " experiment, which re- 
sulted in his remaining down at the bottom. 

Diving for wrecks has since become for divers and 
diverse reasons common in that turbulent stream ; but 
he is honored as the great diver ; the river not being- 
strong enough to get Mm up. John Law afterwards 
tried a Mississippi venture ; but, unlike De Soto, he 
went up, and never came down again. Both De 
Leon and De Soto showed true American entei-prise 
and energy in the pursuit of gold. Like their coun- 
tryman Cortez, in Mexico, they were, however, more 
desirous of discovering metallic placers, and extract- 
ing from them sudden riches, than of luring by patient 
industry from a jealous soil its hoarded secrets of 
cereal wealth. 

On the north, Cartier, in 1-534, became the unhappy 
discoverer of the Canadas, and other out-lying, uncov- 
ered, cold regions, afterwards parcelled out, not to ice 
companies like the Knickerbocker and others, but into 
viceroyalties. These freezing places, from the con- 
tinual stirring about in them of such contrary ele- 
ments for the succeeding century, might well be called 
the ice-creameries of England and France. 

Champlain, in 1603, like a wise man, founded Que- 
bec on a rock ; for which he has been illy requited by 
being called the father of the French settlements in 
Canada. 

Sir Walter Ealeigh's name must always burn bright- 
ly in American history, for his discovery of a smoking 
material on the James Eiver. But his fame needs no 
puffing here, although his reputation became some- 

4 



74 



The comic history of the united states. 




LATER DISCOVERIES IN AMERICA. * 75 

what blown before his death. Another important 
event soon after occurred in connection with American 
discoveries. A Mayflower drifted, in December, across 
seas, and floating against Plymouth Eock, struck its 
tiny anchors in it, and, with Yankee enterprise, climbed 
all over it, covering its rugged clefts and bare surface 
with a mass of luxuriant flowers, with which also 
sprang up tangling weed-growths, all of which have 
since been dried and attracted great attention, much 
sneezing, some sneering, and great use of handkerchiefs 
to preserve the odor of, or prevent the smell of, what 
has penetrated all departments of American history. 
The last discovery which we shall here mention was 
that of Hudson, who brought to light the benighted 
island of Manhattan, then, as since, infested by Woods 
and other poisonous growths. The natives, as now, 
were very free in their manners ; staring at the newly 
arrived, and taking them in by the exhibition of trin- 
kets and gilt ornaments. In spite of the sluggish 
airs from the shores of Westchester and Dutchess, the 
ships of Hudson succeeded in reaching Ehinebeck ; 
a few of his men even penetrating to the dense regions 
of Albany. 



76 , Tat C0.M1C HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



CHAPTEE III. 

ON THE INDIAN CHAKACTER. 

Survey of Indian Charactei* and Lands. — Our Pacific Intentions towards 
the Indians. — The Whites better read than the Red Men, and the 
Effects of Learning. — The Pale Complexion of their Affairs. — Wet 
Blankets thro^\m over their other Habits. — Different Traits discovei-ed 
by School-Girls and through official Spectacles. — Cleaning of Indian 
Reservations. — Indian Style of Dress and its Conveniences. — Indian 
Names. — Examples of their Happy Application. 

NO history of the United States would be com- 
plete without a survey of the character of the 
Indian ; as no State of the Union is acceptable to its 
inhabitants without a survey and appropriation of his 
lands. 

Various as are the lights in which the former may 
be regarded, there is but one light, that of an en- 
light-ened self-interest, with which the latter have 
been treated. The speed with which we have hurried 
the brick-colored races towards the sun's setting is 
conclusive proof of our Pacific intentions, and of our 
dislike to unsettled titles. Eed as is the color of the 
Indian, to this complexion do aU his tribes come at 
last, — a pale conviction that the white man is better 
read than they. 

The chapter of our discoveries on this continent 
opens witli the Indian in the foreground ; and the 
historian, like the earliest explorer, is brought imme- 



ON THE INDIAN CHARACTER. • 77 

diately face to face with him. Unlike the explorer, 
however, we will pause long enough to bury the pro- 
prietor of the estate which he seized and we occupy. 

Blankets, often very wet, have been thrown over the 
Indian ; while as often he has been painted so thickly, 
and feathered so profusely, as to become a bird of. 
quite another color from that of our North American 
vulture. Slow in learning the geography of the race 
that rides him down as on a pale horse evermore, he 
has acquired the name of but one of our streams, that 
of the Firewater, a river whose dry banks seem always 
to divide his retreating from our pursuing frontier 
boundaries. 

Perhaps we cannot give a more variegated notion 
of the different aspects under -which the Indian char- 
acter is viewed, than by putting it in an American 
kaleidoscope, and there giving it a few turns, certain 
that these turns will not be more curious or numer- 
ous than their owners' fortunes. 

1. The Indian character as viewed in schools and 
colleges. 

Listen to an average specimen from the pen of Miss 
Jemima Letitia Youngfancy, — her most pronounced 
effort before the trustees and patrons of Eising Hill 
Seminary. 

" ' Lo ! the poor Indian, whose iintiitored mind 
Sees God in clouds, and hears him in the wind.' 

Lamentations or Shakespeare. 

" No subject is of greater importance to the well- 
being of our race than a proper estimate of the char- 
acter of the red man. Injustice here is more deplor- 
able, since it involves the historic position of a race 



78 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

once lords of all this continent, now fast dwindling 
away, not only out of physical existence, but from the 
realms of discriminating praise. His has been the 
misfortune to be despoiled, not simply of the bosky 
inheritance of fair fields and boundless domains, where 
his ancestors roamed as free as the winds that sweep 
over the breezy sierras of the Eocky Mountains, but 
of the justice which pleads before the tribunal of pos- 
terity for rights withheld and wrongs inflicted. Not 
content to pursue his retreating and emaciated foot- 
steps into the tomb, where his poor body is scarcely 
allowed to moulder away in peace, amid the imple- 
ments and trophies of the cliase, the white man, as 
voracious as the prairie wolves, which whet their sliarp 
fangs against the rocky bases that prop up the giant 
Cordilleras of our beloved land, has denied to him 
those monumental rights with which even savages 
adorn the last resting-places of their braves, — the 
trophied inscriptions carved in the enduring language 
in which Virgil sang and TuUy bm^ned, and in which 
Menander, prophetic of our Transatlantic greatness, 
babbled to the dull ears of a Eoman race, which 
recked not of that ' proud stoic of the woods,' who, 
in life a victim of wi^ong, at death folds himself to 
his solemn sleep, in the language of the greatest of 
our living poets, 

' Like one who Avraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams,' 

but who, also, in the apt words of the same rapt min- 
strel, 

'Like Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, — 
The eternal years of God are theirs.' " 



ON THE INDIAN CHARACTER. 79 

While the waves of applause which ripple around this 
popular and characteristic rhapsody^ grow calm against 
the solid shores of historic truth, we turn to another 
American view equally characteristic. 

2. The Indimi character as seen through official spec- 
tacles. Extract from the Eeport of the Secretary of 
the Interior : — 

" The beneficent policy of repression, steadily pur- 
sued by our government towards the Indian tribes 
still surviving, cannot fail to strike every one but 
themselves. While sentimental Christianity continues 
to dwell upon the rapid extinguishment of their tribes, 
the archives of this department bear gratifying wit- 
ness to the more rapid extinguishment of their titles. 

" There now remain in our borders — which were, it 
must be admitted, for the sake of argument, once 
theirs — but about three hundred thousand of these 
nomad wanderers. Our people must feel an especial 
gratification in the proud reflection, that it is their 
bounty which, now reaching forth the comforts of our 
abundance to these remnants of tribes, supplies at the 
reasonable rate of some $ 10.15 per caput, the wants 
of such as are spared by our efficient and active army 
corps of Indian destructives. 

" This bounty is distributed by honest agents, who 
never fail, while dispensing it, to impress upon the 
recipients a proper regard for the moral suasion of our 
well-mounted rifles. The small commissions reserved, 
from these treaty-stipulated funds, by these agents, is 
too American not to be recognized with patriotic 
pride ; and the especial thanks of Congress are due to 
these self-denying distributers for the amount whicli 



80 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

they kindly leave to be disseminated among the in- 
tended beneficiaries. 

" There is a natural jealousy among our people in 
those States and Territories where former laws inju- 
diciously, but, as it fortunately proves, unsuccessfully 
located these Indian remnants, against the continuous 
occupation of tracts of lands called reservations, 
to which they have been from time to time removed. 
I cannot too strongly recommend that this jealousy 
and acquisitiveness be duly respected, and new reser- 
vations somewhere be speedily provided. Both Provi- 
dence and our need of their territory plainly mark the 
Indians as the American Ishmaelites, against whom 
everybody's hand is raised, and whose shifting tent 
can only be steadied up permanently against the sun- 
set on the Pacific Ocean." 

Some people seem to think that the Indian was 
created to keep before us a McolleU style of dress, 
adapted to the freedom of our institutions, — a trav- 
eller's costume, most convenient for the administra- 
tion of medical assistance, in case of such railroad 
divertisements and steamboat pyrotechnic displays as 
often enliven our journeyings. 

Others look upon the preservation of these remnants 
as providential fields for the employment of the pa- 
tience of domestic missionaries. Young ladies con- 
template them as the only liAdng representatives of 
;nythological Loves, the sole heirs to the bow and 
arrow. Others still admire them as our only legend- 
ary and poetic creations ; the only ghostly figures that 
creep weirdly through our sharp-set American qua- 
drilles. 



ON THE INDIAN CHARACIEK. 



81 



MIL 







82 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

But while such discordant notions rasp the Ameri- 
can ear and conscience about their predecessors, there 
is a mode of hushing up all these family jars ; one 
which seems to have been adopted in all ages, from 
the time of Joshua the son of Nun, down to the Irish 
wakes of our time, namely, to drown them aU in the 
jubilant music procured and paid for at the expense 
of the estate to be divided up. 

A few words in regard to Indian names. An affec- 
tionate and grateful regard for the painted races, which 
will soon be seen only in the picture-galleries and 
books of colored engravings, has sought to sow a crop 
of Indian names over our lakes, rivers, mountains, and 
towns. Unfortunately we have succeeded in keeping 
scarcely enough for seed. But one State has borrowed 
the name of the Indian himself, — Indian-ah? — she 
spelling it, however, in an un-English way, without 
a h, as if she had said, 

" 0, breathe not his name." 

The application of some of these names has been 
singularly felicitous, as Sing-Sing, where the State 
guests attempt no musical flights, but are made to 
hum quite another tune, if not to hush up altogether ; 
Miss-ouri, whose ill-fated union in our Federal family 
has been attended with such left-handed rights, — 
State rights, Fanny Wrights, and, for a long time in 
Kansas, conflicting rights ; Minnehaha, whose ringing 
laugh is during so long a portion of the year frozen in 
her soft throat ; Kan-sas, suggestive of her capacity 
for billingsgate and free use of abusive language ; Ore- 
gon, and yet inviting emigrants to her valuable mines 



ON THE INDIAN CHARACTER. 83 

while she laughs a cunning laugh under the protect- 
ing cap of Mount Hood ; Wy-an-dot Eiver, as if it had 
come to a sort of rocky comma, or interrupting ledge, 
over which it was pausing a moment for hreatli to 
take a hop-and-skip-and-carry-one every leap ; Pot-to- 
wat-o-my Eiver, seeming like a whole family council- 
around a skillet steaming over a fire, while the car- 
rotty-headed mother was slightly walloping the young- 
est of the party for asking some improper question; 
Pawn-ee Pork, reminding one of those old-clothes shops 
kept by U. S., where the unsuspecting and improvi- 
dent Indian, always in want, might be tempted to 
pledge liis wild lands for a little ready cash, or a 
silver fork, or blue trinket ; Man-hat-tan, as if to 
perpetuate the fact of the great head quality of the 
white man in dealing with the dusky ones for the 
purchase of the little island that carries as its name, a 
cover for the little transaction which transferred twenty- 
four dollars to the one, for the fourteen miles of real 
estate sandwiched between the North and East Eivers ; 
Winne-bago, which sets one sneezing a coltish sneeze 
even at the head- waters of the Missis-sippi, and in her 
matronly presence ; and a thousand other spicy abo- 
riginal condiments, sprinkled, like pepper and salt 
over a luscious ham, over our continent, to make it 
more piquant and relishable in the taking. 



BOOK SECOND. 

SETTLEMENTS AND COLONIES, 
1607 TO 1775. 



" And vaguely here, 
Through the cUm mists tliat crowd the atmosphere, 
We draw the outlhies of wehxl figures cast 
In shadows on the background of the past." 

Lo^'GFELLO^v's " New England Tragedies.^ 



■ 'T is pleasant through the loopholes of retreat 
To peep at such a world." 

COWPER. 



CHAPTER I. 



OF AMEEICAN SETTLEMENTS GENERALLY. 



Some American Grounds, like Coffee, unsettled. — Some Settlements pulled 
up by the Roots; others chilled by Fever and Ague. — Hoist Soils 
objected to except by Doctors. — Unexpected Crops of Tomahawks 
from Wheat sown. — Settlements in America because of the Imprac- 
ticability of making any at Home with Creditors. — Wild Oats sown be- 
tween thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth Parallels. — Frequent Settlements 
make long Friends. — Settlements of Old Tavern Scores in Chalky 
Districts. — Religious Squalls prostrate some Plantations. — Indian 
Tempests uproot others. — Growth of Virginia, although Queen Eliza- 
beth a femme sole. — Clergymen's Settlements. — Brides unsettled. — 
Drake arouud the World. 

CLERGYMEN'S dis- 
courses, like grape 
clusters, usually show 
two sides, — a positive 
or sunny one and a 
negative or shady one. 
Desirous of bring- 
ing out the native 
hunches of our his- 
tory more roundly 
against the leafy back- 
ground of its verdant 
youth, we begin by 
showing alternating 
And first the negative, or shady 




The First Year's Crop in the New 
Settlements. 



merits and demerits, 
side. 



88 THE COMLC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The first damp observation shows that many parts 
of America have never been settled at all. In certain 
districts, grounds are found, as in coffee, unsettled ; and 
good grounds exist for this, and, contradictory as it 
may seem, these are generally discovered in poor water. 

In some cases, like those of Gosnold, Ealeigh, De 
La Eoche, and others, attempts were made, and settle- 
ments actually planted, which seemed for a time to 
thrive ; but tlie impatient planters, like curious boys, 
were so desirous of ascertaining how much their 
plants had grown, that they pulled them up to look 
at the roots, — an inspection which the plants re- 
sented by sulking and dying out. In other instances, 
fever and ague was mixed up with the first seed, and 
this had a chilling effect upon the husbandmen. 

Indeed, a hard fight is still going on in many parts 
of the country with this strong unsettler, the record 
of whose assaults and charges is found in the apothe- 
car}^ shops and doctors' offices. These highly colored 
little stockades and forts with the rosy-hued land- 
offices for the sale of the most desirable real estate, 
Avitli water-lots running in front of them, often indeed 
comprise the entire settlement. 

In some instances, the character of the soil inter- 
fered seriously with any permanent occupation of the 
place. People who had no objection to watered silks, 
or watered paper, entertained, it has been found, well- 
grounded reasons for not liking an oozy surface, para- 
graphed between watery curves, and punctuated with 
bullfrogs and other pointed characters. Some of the 
early settlers did venture upon these maritime risks ; 
but policy, or no policy, they ended their speculations 



OF AMERICAN SETTLEMENTS GENERALLY. 89 

under weeping Avillows, with Keat-like epitaphs oyqt 
them, — 

" Here lies one whose name was Avrit in water." 

Oftentimes, even where the soil was rich, the early- 
settler became discouraged by the unexpected crops 
he obtained. Planting wheat, he found that it came 
up a rank growth of Indian corn, tasselled out into 
tomahawks or sharp-pointed arrows, instead of the 
silken tufts which he had a right to look for in the 
order of nature. This result frequently took place in 
the valleys of the Connecticut and Mohawk, along the 
banks of the Mystic Eiver, and upon the otherwise 
pleasant slopes overlooking Narragansett Bay. 

In several instances, too, as in the case of the colo- 
nists shipped by the council of the Plymouth Com- 
pany, the seed thus sent was taken from heaps of full- 
grown vicious specimens, to be found only in London, 
or other large places, instead of being judiciously 
selected from healthy young stocks. Such seed, of 
course, not only became sour and fermented, but this 
fermentation spoiled whatever good grain was found 
accidentally mixed with it. This kind of crop was 
even worse than that of the tomahawks or arrows. 
Of course, tliese penal crops were short-lived. The 
profligate and dissolute soon died in the virtuous soli- 
tudes in which they had no previous experience at 
home to recall and compare ; and escaped as soon as 
possible from settlements whose greatest crime, in 
their eyes, was that in them they could make no scores 
long enough to be worth running away from. 

Some attempted settlements here, because they could 
not succeed in making anv with tlieir creditors at 



90 THE COiMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

home. Of this class, many were found in the bounds 
of tlie London Company, scraped up under the charter 
of James I., granted in 1606, — a company which 
sowed their wikl oats between the thirty-fourth and 
thirty-eighth parallels of latitude, but whose doings, un- 
doings, and misdoings had no parallel whatever. Some 
of this seed, lying dormant, sprouted up in these regions 
as late as 1861, and covered the Carolinas and Virginia 
with a crop worse than teazles or Canada thistles. 

The maxim that " frequent settlements make long 
friends," was doubly verified along the New England 
coast, where the security of the settler could only be 
.maintained by short and decisive footings-up of and 
with the breech-less and treaty-breaking Picts of our 
history, or by such often-planted gatherings as would 
prevent their attempts to run up a score. 

It is almost needless to say that in all the regions 
from the Penobscot Eiver to St. Augustine, under all 
the various charters, and among all classes of colonists, 
English, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, or Huguenot, set- 
tlements were often made on the walls and behind the 
doors of taverns, where the weekly score was kept, — 
a geological district mapped out in a chalk formation, 
the size of which seemed always to astonish the set- 
tler whenever his attention was particularly invited 
to it. Whatever his own fields bore, here the crop 
was unfailing ; or rather its growth was generally in 
tlie inverse ratio to that of his wheat or tobacco 
patch. 

In a few instances settlements, fairly and perma- 
nently made were suddenly uprooted by sudden squalls 
or tempests, which, razing the hair from the heads of 



OF AMERICAN SETTLEMENTS GENERALLY. 91 

tlie colonists, still, as we read of their ferocity and 
fury, raise our own. Such was the scalping-party that 
swept over Deerfield, the savage whirlwind down the 
valley of the Wyoming, and the rapid gust that licked 
up the little settlement of Cherry Valley. 

Now and then also occurred a religious tornado, 
which prostrated whole patches of plantations, and 
which, at one time, threatened to become tlie prevail- 
ing winds of our American continent, taking the place 
even of our strong and steadily blowing trade-winds. 
Thus a company of French Huguenots, sent out in 
1565, by Admiral Coligni, and planted in Florida, 
were overwhelmed by a party of Spaniards, under 
Melendez, who, after murdering them all, placed over 
their mutilated bodies this inscription : " We do this 
not as unto Frenchmen, but as imto heretics." Which 
was the heretical part thus mercilessly dealt with, and 
which the French portion not intended to be harmed, 
cotemporary accounts do not furnish us with materials 
sufficient to enable us to discriminate. They do tell 
us, however, that this then fashionable mode of treat- 
ing religious convictions was imitated by the country- 
men of the French, acting upon what w^as then thought 
to be the proper interpretation of the merciful and 
benign principles of The Book, viz., " doing unto oth- 
ers, what they do unto you " ; for soon after De Gourges, 
sailing from France with three sliips, formed a surprise 
party to two Spanish forts, and after executing a 
Spanish dance w^ith the garrison, took them out and 
hung them up in the trees like dried fruit ; and fear- 
ing that the specimens might be mistaken, left above 
them the recipe, as follows : '•' I do this not as unto 



92 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Spaniards, or mariners, but as unto traitors, robbers, 
and murderers." 

Whether the Spaniards thus done for properly ap- 
preciated the delicate discrimination, we are not in- 
formed. 

To the statistician it may be of interest to know that 
of the abortive attempts at settlements within the 
present limits of the United States, six were made by 
the English, one by the Swedes, two by Spaniards, and 
two by the French. Lovers of that branch of political 
history will be able to wring out of these figures re- 
sults more extraordinary than any we can torture 
them into. 

On the whole, however, notwithstanding all draw- 
backs and misfortunes, the settlements gained steadily 
on the Indians, fever and ague, the cold and exposure, 
tomahawks, tavern-keepers, and surprise parties. Some 
marriages took place, but no settlements were made on 
the bride, except perhaps, in the course of time, her 
old father-in-law and mother-in-law, who were fortu- 
nate if they brought with them, as addition to her 
scanty stock, two whole empty trunks, their own. 
Queen Elizabeth did everything to promote the growth 
of population in her favorite colony of Virginia, except 
to furnish them with a j)ersonal example ; but to make 
up for this omission, she sent out some Episcopal 
clergymen, provided with surplice and stole, and with 
licenses to marry. These obtained settlements for 
themselves, and zealously stimulated them in others. 

As soon as the settlements began fairly to demon- 
strate that they would succeed, they were of course 
vigorously patronized, and in fact " encumbered with 



OF AMERICAN SETTLEMENTS GENERALLY. 93 

help." Plenty of people there were then who at first, 
at the bare mention of American settlements, had 
placed their thumbs to their noses, and irreverently 
given their fingers a quick gyratory motion in the air, 
but who now came forward and claimed the merit of 
having always been the especial friends of the colo- 
nists, and pointed, like the very lieutenants and aid-de- 
camps of General Success, to their uniformly enter- 
tained comdctions, triumphantly exclaiming, " Did we 
not always teU you so ? " As candid historians, we 
cannot withhold our pencils from sketching the por- 
traits of these burly friends of the early years of 
America ; these large-hearted souls, who, sitting at 
home over their comfortable cannel-coal fires, piled 
cheerily up with the dividends from the stock of some 
of the companies formed for planting these shores, 
which they would not touch until it got up to par, 
and who then, fearing that their attachments might 
not be appreciated, cried out their undeviating devo- 
tion in voices that fairly drowned all others. 

From these characters, which only shine in the 
full noonday of prosperity, we gladly turn to Sir 
Francis Drake, who, as early as 1586, did not hesitate 
to divide his last crust with the feeble and strugQ-ling 
colony of Eoanoke Island, succoring them by timely 
aid, and not sucking from them the little feeble 
strength which short crops and long watchings against 
wary foes had left them. Although born in England, 
Drake had a soul which compassed the world, around 
whose waist he passed the second girdle which had 
ever belted it. 



94 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




CHAPTER II. 

THE SETTLEMENTS OF VIRGINIA, DELAWARE, MARYLAND, 
THE CAROLINAS, AND GEORGIA. 

Colored Views whitened. — Blue Ridges and Black Welts In Virginia. — 
Virginia, smothered up in Infancy by Charters, survives Royal nursing. 

— Her Vigilance against her Suitors. — Cotton introduced. — How the 
World managed previously. — Charles I. and his numerous Autographs. 

— Georgia and Oglethorpe. — Charleston set up. — A Point on Old 
Point Comfort. — Tobacco first piped about. — Unmarried Girls as 
Articles of Import. — Estimated in, if not by. Pounds. — The Fancy 
Constitution of John Locke for North Carolina. — Its own Length, but 
Short Life. — South Carolina Rivers do not run up. — Popular Errors 
corrected. — John Wesley. — Singular Effect of his Preaching on the 
Indians. — Marj'land as a Duck of a Colony canvassed. 

COLORED views are too apt to be given and taken 
of these six States, shading down from tlie dead 
African black, through every gradation of tint, to a 
hue almost unimpeach-ably Caucasian. 

It is true that Virginia carried on her bosom a Blue 
Ridge, as in later times some of her progeny have 
•^Dorne on their backs darker ridges; but until 1620 no 
welts of the latter character stood out on her fair shoul- 
ders ; and these, be it said to his shame, were raised 
by the master of a Dutch man-of-war who, on the 
very day in August that the Pilgrim party embarked in 
the Mayflower, at Delft-Haven, in his own country, 
landed twenty negroes for sale on the banks of the 
James River, leaving a black mark which two hundred 
and forty-five years have barely succeeded in washing 
3* 



96 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

out. In her very cradle, in 1606, Virginia was loaded 
down and half smothered with that royal blanket, a 
charter. Not content with this comforter, the royal 
nurses from London kept piling other blankets of the 
same kind upon the vigorous infant, and because it 
was vigorous, until within the short space of fourteen 
years no less than four were heaped upon her. These 
were far from being counter-panes, but on the con- 
trary served in that warm climate to distress the 
child, and eventually to bring out eruptions. Under 
the second of these, in 1609, Maiyland was tucked up 
in the same bed with Virginia ; but in 1621, not find- 
ing the company agreeable, she was taken out by Lord 
Baltimore, and put into a pleasant and comfortable 
trundle-bed of her own ; the chivalrous young lord 
naming the baby after Henrietta Maria, wife of 
Charles I., and daughter of the gallant Henry of 
Navan-e, afterwards Henry IV. of France. The year 
1621 was emphasized in the infant settlement of 
Virginia by the introduction of cotton and the first 
written constitution, — two prolific American seeds 
that have each borne large harvests. Considering the 
varied uses to which the former is now applied in 
clothing human bodies and habitations, and the latter 
in padding political addresses and lawsuits, we are 
puzzled to conceive how the world got on, and espe- 
cially how congressmen managed to make speeches, or 
lawyers to live, prior to those great discoveries, — dis- 
coveries more important in some aspects tljan those of 
iron, the Eeformation, Illinois divorces, gunpowder, 
steam, the doctrine of legal insanity, Brandreth's 
pills, and others, without which of course no well- 



THE SETTLEMENTS OF VIEGINIA, ETC. 97 

ordered or well - digesting family can long pro- 
ceed. 

Seven years later Charles I. contracted to take the 
entire tobacco crop of Virginia; hoping probably by 
the free use of this narcotic to drug the alarmed politi- 
cal conscience of England. 

The ship that took the first Maryland emigrants up 
the Potomac to their new settlement was called the 
Ark and the Dove, and carried in its beak the olive- 
branch of religious toleration. 

In 1630, the same liberality in disposing of broad 
strips of American territory was shown by King 
Charles I. in granting a deed, embracing North Caro- 
lina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to Sir Eobert Heath ; 
but in 1663 his son, the second Charles, desirous of 
improving his own handwriting, which had been some- 
what neglected from his eighth year, in consequence 
of the necessarily active business life Cromwell had 
obliged him to lead, put his signature, early one foggy 
morning, to a paper which somebody laid in his way, 
and which, when brought out to the light, proved to be 
a grant to Lord Clarendon and several other pleasant, 
gentlemanly fellows, of tliis same small North Ameri- 
can farm. This select little knot of farmers, after 
building a few barns on their farm, discovered that it 
was not large enough for their purposes. Like the 
Irishman who wanted an additional sixpence to drink 
the health of the gentleman who had generously given 
him a five-dollar bill, they desired a back field to 
dump manure on ; and they finally obtained a second 
autograph from the obliging Charles to a bit of paper, 
allowing them to use forever the small patch lying 
5 G 



98 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

westward to the Pacific. Tlie farm was kept together 
until 1729, when it was divided up by George II. into 
two parts, called North and South Carolina ; the latter 
half being, three years later, again split into two, and 
the lower part named, after the burly old landlord, 
Georgia. Nearly fifty years, however, before this 
division, upon a tongue of land called Oyster Point, 
and bivalved between the Ashley and Cooper Rivers, 
Charleston was first set upon its uneasy foundations. 
AVhether affected by the contiguity of Polly Island, by 
the use of too much pepper — always cheap in warm 
regions — upon the native oysters, or whether unduly 
exhilarated by too exclusive a contemplation of the 
cotton seed, which seems to have enlarged its dilated 
and dilating pupils, the place, although but seven feet 
above high tide, has always been given to high notions, 
tod subject to a certain vertigo. An admirable in- 
gredient, the Protestant Huguenot element, tossed out 
of France by the revoked edict of Nantes, was infused 
into the young Settlement of South Carolina in 1685. 
The plant of liberty, however, early struck its anchor- 
ing roots close by the side of the cotton-plant ; and 
although the governors, sent out by the royal proprie- 
tors from England, continually hacked into its smooth 
trunk, it still grew apace, and its bracing tonic odors 
filled not only the regions Avatered by the Santee and 
Pedee, but were wafted northwards and over the sister 
Colonies. 

Although it is said that " old Virginny never tires," 
it must have been because she had a robust constitu- 
tion, for a busier body never existed. Always resist- 
ing the attempts made by the profligate royal gover- 



THE SETTLEMENTS OF VIRGINIA, ETC. 99 

nors upon her virginity, she had to watch them, day 
and night, for fear that they would steal her hard 
earnings and run away with them. In fact, during 
the sixty years that succeeded her birth at Jamestown, 
in 1606, she was constantly on the alert, putting up 
scarecrows on her cornfields, and notices of spring- 
guns, to warn away intruders ; but these, so far from 
frightening away, only attracted the curious bills of 
the Indians. She was also forced to hold fast with 
might and main to the scanty wardrobe brought out 
by her from England, and with which those dissolute 
fellows, the young, titled, rakish, good-for-nothing 
overseers, were always taldng liberties. Fortunately 
for her, as well as her sisters, the two Carolinas and 
Georgia, her shoulders were well covered by capes, so 
securely fastened on that they could not be snatched 
away, and their charms exposed to the rude stare or 
prying curiosity of idle visitors from France and Eng- 
land, and even from staid, sober Holland. And we 
here take the opportunity of repelling the slander so 
often circulated upon Virginia, that she is " the mother 
of States," — an aspersion which, if true, would stain 
her virgin fame, and leave a bar sinister across the 
shields of the States thus born out of Avedlock. 

The first suitor for the budding affections of the 
youtliful Georgia, or Georgiana, although bearing the 
suspicious name of Ogle-thorpe, proved to be a man 
of honorable intentions, high-minded, and in every 
respect faithful to his ardent vows, — a constant mate 
in all her joys and trials during his residence on the 
Savannah Eiver, from 1732 to 1743. Virginia s royal 
lovers, on the contrary, although always protesting 



100 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

their good intentions, were almost uniformly faithless. 
The last one bore the ill-omened, but appropriate 
name of Dun-more. He was very importunate, and in 
every way attempted to get her to make over her then 
valuable property to him, but in vain ; and at last so 
mercenary did he become, and so disagreeable did he 
make himself, that she was obliged to show him the 
door. 

The spirited damsel was always plucky, and soon 
after this domestic difficulty made up her mind to be 
wholly independent, and so in fact pubhcly gave out 
to tlie whole world, saying that " she did n't care who 
knew it." Massachusetts gallantly stood by the young 
ffirl in her declaration, and so did all her brothers and 
sisters ; even little Ehody tossing up her jaunty sailor's 
cap, and shouting out that, under Providence, she was 
ready to " sail in." 

The name of Sir AValter Ealeigh is greenly twined 
through the earliest settlements of North Carolina. 
In her coasts he took a constantly augmenting inter- 
est, and furnished to the State its capital. His love 
for tlie new settlement only ceased to beat with his 
heart. His verse, which the author of " The Fairy 
Queen" describes as "sprinkled with nectar," and "vic- 
ing with the notes of the summer nightingale," was 
musical with her praises ; and his " History of the 
World" lays at her feet the tribute of his warm, 
chivalric nature. 

The duty which he felt and gave to the two Colonies, 
Virginia and North Carolina, was very different from 
the duties which his successors endeavored to draw 
from them, — duties so onerous as to drain not only 



THE SETTLEMENTS OF VIRGINIA, ETC. 101 

the pockets but the hearts of the young communities 
from which they were pressed out. 

But amid all the trials to which Virginia was sub- 
jected by the rapacity of lier governors and the un- 
sated appetites of councils, named by the home board 
corporators, there was one point which she could 
always contemplate with satisfaction, namely. Old 
Point Comfort, — a grandmotherly place, which her 
children then, and since, often visited, laying their hot 
heads lovingly in her lap, until her pleasant breezes 
cooled their feverish throbbings. 

Tobacco was first grown in Virginia in 1616 ; and 
we crave leave to add, that although much piped 
about ever since, has never ceased to create a smoke ; 
its curls hanging thickly and gracefully arcmpd the 
heads of its world-wide admirers from that time down 
to the present, — an instance of unchanged custom 
rarely seen. 

Virginia, however, did not grow all of her luxuries ; 
for, in 1620, we find her importing ninety respectable 
unmarried girls, who, on their arrival, and after pay- 
ment of customary duties, were soon disposed of. This 
successful invoice was followed, the succeeding year, 
by a cargo of sixty more, the price for whom in- 
creased, after they were landed, from one hundred and 
twenty to one hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco. 
How this advance affected the relations between them 
and the lower-priced wives of the preceding year, 
whether it laid the foundation for the difference be- 
tween the F. F. V.'s and the white trash, the want of 
newspapers and of weU-preserved family bUls does not 
enable us to judge. 



102 THE COMIC HISTORV OF THE UNITED STATES 

Certain it is that this commercial rape was as cor- 
dially acquiesced in by the seized damsels, as was the 
rape of the Sabines by those young ladies ; and proved 
to be as beneficial to the growth of the infant settle- 
ment as that novel match-making on the banks of the 
Tiber. 

The descendants of these unions on the James and 
Potomac would have been more numerous had not 
their numbers been thinned off by Indian knives, 
which were very busy in 1622, 1623, and 1644-1646. 
This last war was followed, three years later, by a petty 
imitation of the civil strife which had raged for seven 
years between the Parliament and Charles I. in Eng- 
land, and which ended, in the latter country, by taking 
off the king's head, and in Virginia by taking away 
many of their former constitutional privileges. Crom- 
well fumigated them thoroughly in their own tolmcco- 
smoke, until all the smell of loyalty was gone. Upon 
the accession of Charles II., in 1660, arbitrary legis- 
lation was sought here, as in England, to stamp 
out the rights of the people which had silently 
but steadily grown up into a stiff crop ; but resist- 
ance followed, and in this struggle between Virginia 
and the crown the succeeding vears were spent, until 
1754. 

The principal event in the history of the settlement 
of ISTorth Carolina was the fancy constitution furnished 
for it in 1669, by John Locke, whose understanding 
about it differed wholly from that of the people, 
through whose heads it never could be got. Besides 
having plenty of time on his hands, Locke made his 
constitution so long, and divided it up into so many 



THE SETTLEMENTS OF VIRGINIA, ETC. 103 

parts, that the youngest settler died before he had read 
it half through, and beqvieathed the further perusal of 
it to his descendants, with all his shares in what it 
most resembled, — the Dismal Swamp. 

A sniff of this vague, shadowy constitution, or bun- 
" die of airy rights, by the adjacent settlement of South 
Carolina, affected her with such a fit of sneezing, that 
it kept on from that time until 1865, and from which 
she only found relief now and then in her cotton 
pocket-handkerchiefs. 

• We may remark that it is a vulgar error to sup- 
pose that the rivers in South Carolina run up hill, — 
just as it. is a common mistake to believe that the Tar 
Eiver, in North Carolina, originates in a turpentine 
district, and flows in a thick stream into Pamlico 
Sound. We may as well, also, correct the almost 
universal notion, that the inhabitants of Charleston 
have a particular fondness for fire as a steady, every- 
day diet. 

The chief incident which marked the uneventful 
record of the Georgia settlement was the advent, in 
1736, of John Wesley. 

He preached in the Methodist language to the Creeks, 
Choctaws, and Cherokees ; but those short-lived tribes, 
attending on a certain occasion one of his camp- 
meetings, and listening to the benevolent missionary 
giving out one of his brother Charles's hymns, became 
so discouraged that they went back to their own 
camp and ways. 

In addition to what we have already said of Mary- 
land, we would state that its mild chmate attract- 
ed canvas-back ducks, as its mild principles of re- 



104 THE COxMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

lisious toleration Lrouiilit to its borders swarms of 
emigrants. Both liave had a damp residence amid 
its amphibious shores, where the land seems two 
thirds water, and the water a little more moist than 
elsewhere. 



THE SETTLEMENTS OF VIRGINIA, ETC. 105 




CHAPTER III. 

JOHN SMITH. 

John Smith historically considered. — The Number in Leading Cities 
stated. — How classified. — Why he is not put in a separate Volume or 
in an Appendix. — Origin of the Smiths. — American Genealogical 
Trees. — Smiths up a Stump, in the Sap, and dangling from the 
Branches. — The Antiquity and Ubiquity of the Smiths. — Variety 
and Extent of their Occupations and Operations. — Will probably in 
time own all the World. — Comic Situations of John Smiths in Cities, 
at Family Dinner-Parties, at Prayer-Meetings, at Balls, in Titles to 
Real Estate, etc. — Whether he can be sued. — Other Legal Questions 
in reference to him considered. — John Smith of Pocahontas Fame a 
Myth. 

AS a magnet, laid amid a heap of iron-filings, 
gathers tliem all to itself in close-fitting unity, 
so the figure of John Smith crystallizes about it the 
elements of the early settler's life in Virginia. N'or 
upon the banks of the Chickahominy alone does John 
Smith stalk in romantic proportions ; but through all 
times, in every kingdom, state, city, and village, at all 
epochs, and in every shade of barbarism or civilization, 
is he found. New York holds 187 ; Philadelphia, 231 ; 
Boston, 35; Brooklyn, 118; London, 480; and every 
capital in the world its own appropriate comple- 
ment. 

• No railroad can be run that does not touch his 
farm ; no joke that does not skim his peculiarities ; 
no portrait that does not contain his features ; no 



JOHN SMITH. 107 

conductor's stealings that does not comprise liis con- 
tributions ; no miller's breakfast-bell that does not 
toll the knell of a portion of his grist. 

As dyers classify mankind by the color of their 
skins, wine-growers belt the world by isothermal 
vine-lines, and lawyers divide the human race into 
plaintiffs and defendants, so the historian, straining 
his telescopic gaze over the centuries and the globe, 
and discarding the division of the species into " man- 
kind and the Beecher family," — no longer appropriate 
since the publication of " Norwood " reduced the latter 
down to the common level, — justly sweeps all man- 
kind into two great classes, the Smiths and the rest of 
creation. 

And so John Smith finds appropriate place, not only 
in every history, but a special niche and chapter to 
himself. We might perhaps have put this select men- 
tion of a great public benefactor, an erudite scholar, 
and universal toiler, into a note, smothered up in an 
appendix, dimmed by the milky-way of small asterisks, 
and hazily obscured by countless references and au- 
thorities ; but this injustice to the merits of an ancient 
family, whose tomlxs mound every churchyard, and 
whose door-plates shine on almost every house in our 
cities and towns not appropriated to drugs, groceries, 
or confectioneries, would, we are persuaded, sorely 
wound the public conscience. 

The origin of the Smiths, like that of so many other 
distinguished families, is involved in distressing doubt. 
Audacious investigation, with a natural wish to pene- 
trate to the roots, and too fearless of consequences 
where prudence perhaps might be better satisfied 



108 THE COMIC HISTORY .OF THE UNITED STATES. 

with a limited view of ancestry, has pressed its in- 
quiries np and down genealogical trees until it has 
unearthed Smiths at the base, Smiths in the sap, 
Smiths np the stump, and even Smiths dangling at 
the end of the branches. No nation looks down in 
theory from such lofty heights of indiflerence upon 
ancestral distinctions as the American ; none can 
better afford to cut down their genealogical, as they 
do their natural, forests ; yet none are so fond of look- 
ing up to these airy and waving altitudes, and none 
that more carefully spare the tree which in youth 
sheltered them, and which waves, like the flag, long 
and fruity to their eyes. An American book of lead- 
ing families would be larger than the London Direc- 
tory, and make the fortune of even the Congressional 
Printer. True, the family herald would in nearly all 
these cases, like the chroniclers of ancient states, and 
the biographer of the Smiths, be obliged to substitute 
foggy conjecture for well-defined tracings. They 
would all find that their researches would, if carried 
back far enough, converge to the same focal point ; 
and if produced at equal distances in the future, 
diffuse themselves into a common social, monetary, 
and undistinguishing equality : for families and states 
are much like boys at the ends of a balanced board, 
now up, now down, at one time touching the ground, 
then curving upward through medium spaces to a 
culminating point, while some one at the other end 
is noiselessly passing through a reversed career. 

And so John Smith balances and pendulates on the 
same board with a Van Eensselaer, John Brown with a 
Tozewell, Mr. Snooks with a Winthrop, and John 
Doe with a Hampton. 



JOHN SMITH. 109 

There is, we think, but little doubt that the Hebrew 
Samson, the Greek Hercules, the Spanish Cicl, the 
Scandinavian Thor, and the English Arthur of the 
Eouiid Table, were each the John Smith of his nation 
and time, a multiform unity swinging round the circle 
of varied labor, hard work, and heroic deeds, accom- 
plishing imder one name — a family one, possessed 
at various times by several individuals — the work of 
all reapers, sewing-machines, cow-milkers, cotton and 
woollen factories. These national heroes, like the 
John Smiths, their descendants now, were arrayed in 
warm climates in a fragmentary style of short dress ; 
in the middle regions in a Highland garb, appropri- 
ately frilled or furred ; and in the north with a canine 
material, heroic in quality, and modishly artistical, — 
a bark. 

The most reliable studies trace the smith genealogy 
back to Vulcan's workshop, the original Smith being 
one of those employed on designs for Achilles's shield, 
— a claim which experts in coats-of-arms will not 
readily stamp as a forge-ry. 

As there is no period of history without its John 
Smith, so there is no profession that does not enroll, 
no trade that does not contain, no occupation, from 
an office-holder's up to that of an honest man's, that 
does not embrace his name. Everywhere, on the sea 
and land ; between every parallel of latitude, almost 
between every pair of sheets ; at every pole and at 
every polling-place ; on all rivers and in every strait ; 
at every point, and even at Point-no-point ; on the top, 
at the middle and bottom of every hill, enterprise, 
company, board of directors, and job ; in all churches, 



110 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UJS^ITED STATES. 




Okiginal, Full-length Portrait of John Smith. 



JOHN SMITH. Ill 

synagogues, mosques, and temples ; preaching, singing, 
and listening ; talking all tongues, as well as curing, 
drying, and eating them ; in prisons, police-stations, 
pulpits, grand-jury and other boxes ; to-day hung, 
to-morrow putting on his black cap and sentencing 
the culprit to the rope's end, and the day following 
condemning a pair to a less hempen noose ; in the 
pugilistic ring, or ecclesiastical fight ; the actor on the 
stage, and at the same time the spectator in the box, 
looking at himself personating his own cliaracter, — 
for every character is his, — everywhere, and in every- 
thing, is found this jolly, morose, lazy, active, sleepy, 
wakeful, fighting, pacific, coarse, refined, fat, lean, tall, 
short, blue-eyed, black-eyed John Smith. 

In truth, when we tliink of him as ubiquitous, om- 
niscient, and omnipresent, doing all things in all 
places, carrying on all businesses, living on all the 
real estate, owning at some time or other all the per- 
sonal property, pocketing all the greenbacks, whistling 
to aU the dogs, riding all the horses, looking after all 
the little poodle dogs, buying shoes and stockings for 
all the-children agreeable and disagreeable, we get into 
such a world of Jolm Smiths, such a nightmare of 
Johns, such a maelstrom of Smiths, such a gurdinfr, 
roaring, splitting, spitting, laugliing, screeching, titi- 
lated, exhilarated, carnival, and Fourth of July of John 
Smiths, that we seem to be in a room lined with 
mirrors that reflect only John Smiths from all sides ; 
indeed, we almost fancy ourselves a John Smith, our 
father and mother a John Smith, and all our aunts, 
cousins, uncles, nephews, brothers, and sisters, and 
even their clergymen, grocers, shoemakers, bootblacks. 



112 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

to be John Smiths, and that our last note and the 
mortgage on our house is owned by John Smith. 

But the Smith family do not create all the humor 
and spend all the jollity upon others. Funny are the 
scenes which transpire among themselves. At a 
family party two John Smiths introduced, and each 
staring at his other self, is a conundrum ; three a 
charade, in which the whole company give it up. A 
popular young lady, with card in her belt to carry the 
memory of her numerous engagements, finds herself 
swimming in doubt as to the identity of her partners, 
when John Smith claims her in the next dance, then 
for the following cotillon, then bows over her hand 
for the succeeding polka, and so confronts her at every 
turn of the figure and every return of the dance, until 
she doubts her own individuality, and requests to be 
baptized over again with a new name to get out of the 
tangle. Then at a family dinner-party of Smiths, 
when Mr. Smith asks Mr. John Smith the part of the 
turkey he prefers, and several voices in different tones 
and keys indicate as many different portions of the 
bird, there is a delightful series of warm explanations 
which enables the meal to become healthily cool, 
while each of the responders courteously leaves the 
piece he wants and takes one he did not desire. 

Among the comic situations which Mr. Smith un- 
consciously creates are, that of a conveyancer, in a 
large city, endeavoring to trace a title through a J. S., 
or trying to ascertain which of the one hundred in the 
directory is the rightful defendant in a judgment, or 
the mortgagor in a mortgage, constituting a lien on 
the property sought to be transferred ; or a country 



JOHN SMITH. 113 

cousin, for the first time in New York or Philadelphia, 
consulting the directory to find her puzzled way to 
the forgotten residence of her cousin John Smith, or 
innocently asking a polite but humorous gentleman, in 
the street whether he knows John Smith's house ; or 
a clergyman in a city prayer-meeting asking John 
Smith to lead in prayer, and finding three or four, 
with closed eyes, responding to the request; or a 
notary making up his mind where to leai^e a notice 
of protest of a large note on the indorser John Smith, 
who wittily wrote his name without any address under 
it. Indeed, it would be one of the causes cel^bres for 
a jury to determine whether a child might not guilt- 
lessly mistake his parent who bore only this undis- 
tinguishing name ; whether a forgery of the name 
could be committed ; whether an express company be 
bound to deliver a trunk to this nominis umhrcc ; 
or whether a wife, Mrs. John Smith, could be lawfully 
convicted of eloping wdth any one. 

Then when John Smith comes to die, in the church- 
yard, and afterwards when the dead arise — but we 
stagger under the vision of puzzled bones and stop. 

We cannot write more lucidly the history of the 
John Smith of Pocahontas fame. It grows mythical 
the more we look at it ; an abstraction dancing over 
the coals of the early settlement of Virginia, a face 
and figure flitting like a twisting flame, up, around, and 
through the grate ; seeming as we try to fix our atten- 
tion upon him like a dozen different men, one falling 
in love with the young squaw, another surveying the 
James and Eappahannock, another mastering the 
turbulent spirits of a dissolute and discontented, settle- 



114 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ment; another caught and brought before Powhatan, 
while a graceful girl of twelve summers gently puts 
away the descending chib ; another sailing to England, 
and peeping out ever and anon among the friendly 
faces that make the living frame to her young virgin 
face, yet again dissolving and melting into the -gray 
dimness of the morning light. Of only one thing do 
we feel certain in regard to John Smith in general, the 
average John Smith, that the portrait here presented, 
taken by instantaneous photography, representing his 
multitudinous character, is the only genuine and 
original likeness ever published. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW ENGLAND STATES. 

Views of the New England States and Character determined by one's 
Church. — Partial Notions about Clocks, Nutmegs, Pumpkin Pies, etc. 
— Getting an Historical Coach to one's self. — Why the Puritans did 
not hang up their Stockings on their first Christmas Eve. — Their 
nearest Neighbors. — Indian Points and other Points. — Governor 
Carver and Want of Meats. — Massasoit, and how he kept his Faith 
in-violate. — New Hampshire on the Rampage. — Why Boston was 
begun, and why it is not finished. — Roger Williams and his Provi- 
dential Ways and Doings. — Connecticut founded, although its Char- 
ter not found. — The Wind against Cromwell. — Harvard College. — 
Vermont and her Ways and Means. 

" 'T^ELL me," says a witty Frencliman, " what time 
X in tlie morning a man rises, and I will tell yon 
his notions of the character of the Germans." Tell us 
the kind of church a man attends, and we will under- 
take to give you his opinion of the character of the 
Puritan Pilgrims, and the objects and value of the 
New England settlements. Not more various are 
men's religions than their New England convictions ; 
as checkered and contrary as the black and white 
squares on a Scotch shawl. Some people, of pious 
trainings but of an agricultural turn of mind, hold 
the idea that New England came, like the wonderful 
coach in the story of Cinderella, from a pumpkin ; 
and hence travel naturally to the conclusion that the 
principal mission of her people is to keep up Thanks- 
giving day. 



116 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Others run all their lives with the notion that the 
Yankee States were settled by a race of peripatetic 
traders, — a revival of the school of Aristotle, — let 
out in Greece, and taking a play-spell here. Their 
picture of New England would be a pedler, dipped 
like a tallow-candle in an economical, tight-fitting 
suit of tawny homespun, driving a wagon full of 
tin notions, clocks, and a variety of domestic nut- 
megs, artistically whittled out of bass-wood, singing 
Old Hundred, with a pitch-pipe close to his nose to 
keep it in tune. Others, on the contrary, regard it as 
a large, full-bearing orchard in autumn, laden with 
golden fruit, fall-pippins, pearmains, seek-no-furthers, 
russets, and spitzenbergs, supplying its owners, the 
neighborhood, and the distant market with their in- 
comparable harvest. Fortunate for the historian, for 
debating-societies, and the magazines are these varie- 
gated opinions. They give a spiciness to New Eng- 
land, as if she were a tropical garden instead of a 
poor-man's patch, fenced in with rocks and spiked 
down with long pegs to prevent the frost in the spring 
from heaving her up uncomfortably. They serve, like 
French cookery, to present the same dish simmering 
in various sauces under different aspects and names, 
and yet all from the same little market- basket. 

Cooke, the comic actor, who hated to be crowded, 
once so successfully iised upon a stage-driver his 
extraordinary power of changing the expression of 
his face, — getting in at one door of the coach, slipping 
out of the one opposite, and again presenting himself 
with a new style of visage, — that he took all the 
inside to himself And so it has been with the New 



OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW ENGLAND STATES. 117 

England character. It has so many phases that it 
requires almost the entire omnibus of American his- 
tory to itself. One point is quite certain, that the 
first settlers had a hard place to land on, and a great 
many sharp Indian points to provide against after 
they had landed. 

St. Augustine was fifty-five, Jamestown fourteen, and 
the baby Dutch settlement on Manhattan Island ten 
years of age, when the little English congregation 
which had passed thirteen years at Leyden in Holland, 
— stowed away in two small vessels, one of sixty and 
the other of one hundred and eighty tons, — stepped 
. out of their cold cabins upon the colder rock of 
Plymouth. It was four days before Christmas ; but 
for want of good fireplaces they did not hang up their 
stockings. It was as much as they could do to keep 
from hanging themselves. Their nearest white neigh- 
bors were at Port Eoyal, Nova Scotia, five hundred 
miles distant, — a trifle too far away to invite New- 
Year's calls. 

Most of the party were obliged to wade on shore, 
thus breaking the ice for those who followed; the 
spray of the sea freezing as it fell upon them, making 
them quite ice-clad, in fact almost as shaggy and 
pointed as their inside purposes and character. 

They carried on shore one dead body, the only one 
who had died on the voyage of one hundred and six 
days ; the first planting in that field, which in time, 
like the rest of the world, was to be claimed as God's 
acre. 

The soil upon which they settled bore more char- 
ters, Indian arrows, and gravestones than pumpkins 



118 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW ENGLAND STATES. 119 

or corn ; and even two years after the landing, we are 
told tliat the stock on hand ot" the latter was so small 
that only five kernels were allowed for each private, — 
an allowance which, since the great Eebelliou, seems 
incredibly small. 

There was a Carver among the party, and, being a 
sharp fellow, he was appointed Governor ; but as there 
was but little meat to be sliced, — deer being scarce 
and liigh priced, — and the Indians seldom giving any 
quarter, he soon pined away and died. Cape Cod was 
not far distant, but the emigrants being without boats, 
the fish, especially without potatoes, were poor pick- 
ing. A few years later, however, and there were 
large fishing-parties made \\p, which not only took 
in fish, but each other, by hook and by crook. The 
grapes of Martha's Vineyard, at the time of which we 
speak, hung so high as to be very sour. Besides the 
Puritans, it is • well known, set their faces against 
the cup, as they did against kissing. Tlie modern 
town of Dux-bury, which nudges Plymouth on the 
east, was then too young to afford mvich game, even 
for the long reaches of Miles Standish, who was 
obliged to content himself with such small shooting 
as the Narragansetts afforded. 

Massasoit, however, was the fast friend of the set- 
tlers, and made a treaty which, in the bluest times, he 
always kept in-violate. 

In 1629 a patent was received from that accom- 
1 lished penman Charles I., incorporating " The Gov- 
ernor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, in New 
England " ; which eventually proved to be, what most 
patents are, not worth the paper it w^as written on. 



120 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

'New Hampshire and a part of Maine, included in this 
patent, was as early as 1622 sold out to two enter- 
prising young gentlemen, Sir Ferdinand Gorges and 
Captain John Mason ; but after an experiment of 
nineteen years, these royal speculators resold their 
state rights to Massachusetts, which held on to them 
until 1680, when Charles II., in order to make a place 
for a friend and to encourage lawsuits about titles in 
the idle courts, erected New Hampshire into a sep- 
arate Province, independent of Massachusetts, but de- 
pendent on himself. 

Lying under cold snow-white sheets, with jealous 
neighbors, the French settlers of Canada and Acadia, 
ready to put pins in the youngster and keej) her crying, 
and if possible to stunt her growth, Maine was long- 
est in her cradle of any of the infant settlements. As 
early as 1602 some Frenchmen landed on her coast, 
but only remained long enough to make a few eyelet- 
holes in that watery frill Avhich the busy but chill 
fingers of the Atlantic has wrought upon her eastern 
hem. It was reserved for the sturdier Saxon race to 
take the infant in hand, and, by hardier treatment, 
to bring her up to robuster strength. The first serious 
effort was made in 1622. That court pet. Gorges, 
obtained, in 1639, a charter, which not only covered 
the present State, but lapped over into the borders of 
Massachusetts. The latter resented this interference 
with her own by making counter-claims, and in 1652 
insisted upon taking the child under its exclusive pro- 
tection. The contest, carried into tlie English courts, 
outlived of course its original promoters, but was at 
last, in 1677, terminated, to the astonishment of the 



OF THE SETTLEMENT OE THE NEW ENGLAND STATES. 121 

suitors and the disgust of the la^vvyers. The custody 
of the infant, now grown to be h stripling, was 
awarded to Massachusetts, which, always looking after 
the Maine chance, got a most obstreperous minor in 
charge. 

In 1630 a band of eight hundred and forty bodies 
and souls, led by John Winthrop, and tempted by a 
spring of good water, settled on the penmsula of Shaw- 
mut, and began Boston, which, we are glad to say, is 
not finished yet. May it never be ; but, ever growing, 
may it carry on wagon-making as successfully as in 
former days, furnishing hubs for those covered trans- 
portation carts which trundle westward, and which, if 
allowed to stand still over night, swarm into a new 
colony the next morning. 

The following year a miniature church and state 
experiment was made in the Massachusetts settlement, 
by limiting the eligibility to civil office to church- 
members, whether civil or not. 

The first log-cabin builders, who had themselves 
. fled from the knife of the law, whetted it to a keen 
edge and turned it upon their fellow-sufferers, who 
differed from them in their religious or moral senti- 
ments. Profane swearing, tippling, taking interest on 
loans of money, and wearing expensive jewelry became 
legal crimes, among those who had suppressed with 
Spartan rigor their exercise in themselves and their 
families. The next generation, in 1658, could not 
tolerate drab coats or drab principles, and sought to 
put down the new fashions by hanging up several of 
their owners in them. The wood-colored styles multi- 
plied of course, notwithstanding the crimson mode of 
6 



122 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

dealing with them, — a mode which, whenever men- 
tioned, brings up a flush on every fair New England 
cheek to this day. The flush is not likely to be 
left unsummoned so long as the enemies of ISTew 
England have any ink left, or so long as her owoi 
gifted sons preserve in choicest amber the weli-em- 
balmed and dramatic specimens. 

In 1635 Eoger Williams, illuminated by principles 
of religious toleration, unkindled as yet in the Puritan 
settlements of Massachusetts Bay, Salem, and Boston, 
carried his softly burning torch out of the reach of the 
chill breath of the General Court, which sought in 
vain to blow out the wavering flame. 

He pitched his tent on the Blackstone Eiver where 
it widens into Narragansett Bay, and there grafted 
such a lovely little bud of religious equality upon the 
old trunk of settled law, that, SAvelling under Provi- 
dence into the State of Rhode Island, it has become 
one of the finest fruit-trees in our American orchard. 
Some people, of aquatic notions and learning their 
geography in the pitching hold of a yacht, have erro- . 
neously supposed that Ehode Island was included in 
the state of Newport. Such notions rest on very 
sandy foundations, and are no more to be trusted than 
the speculations of the idly learned about the round 
tower of that resort for capital sea-bathing. 

The settlement of Rhode Island, like the other 
American plantations, was kept alive and stirring by 
Indian wars; but, aided by the Narragansetts, she 
succeeded at last, after attempting to bury their hatch- 
ets, in burying the Pequods themseh^es, leaving not 
one to perpetuate the seed. 



OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW ENGLAND STATES. 123 

]\Ieanwliile, tlie valley of the Connecticut, visited 
by exploring parties from Pl}Tnouth Colony under the 
younger Winthrop, and by heavy flanked Dutchmen 
from the island of Manhattan, had. also attracted at- 
tention to its valuable real estate ; and its lots of 
course were mapped out and deeded in that first-class 
broker's office, the Court of Charles I., situated in 
London. 

Wethersfield, although it then had no onions to 
affect their eyes, made the mouths of a party of 
emigrants, who Avent there under Hooker in June, 
1636, to water pleasantly, as they gaped over its 
broad meadow-lands, shaded with huge trees, and 
dipping their hea^y grasses into the wide and flowing 
river. 

But these huge trees at Wethersfield and Windsor, 
under which the infant plantations of Connecticut 
were made, were less valuable than the large old oak 
^ at Hartford, which afterwards became more famous for 
standing mute, and hiding its secrets, than the talking 
oak of Tennyson. 

Ten years later, in 1638, New Haven was founded, 
built from the first on the square ; its long sand- 
reaches cooled in the shade of branches that waved 
frequent welcomes to successive bands of settlers. 
But a shadier event for Charles I. occurred this year 
in England, in the detention of John Hampden and 
Oliver Cromw^ell, with all their traps and plunder, 
after it and they had been safely stowed away under 
hatches on board ship. 

How little do we know what 's in the wind ? Had 
it blown that day southwest instead of northeast, 



124 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Charles I. miglit have worn his handsome but worth- 
less head many years longer \ the Stuart family to-day 
might perhaps he occupying the state chair of Vic- 
toria and the heavy Hanoverians ; and the descend- 
ants of Messrs. Cromwell and Hampden he keeping 
store in some of our villages, or even got so low as to 
become aldermen, members of assembly, or even de- 
scended to the House of Representatives. 

The same year John Harvard left a donation of 
three thousand dollars to a select school, founded two 
years previously at Newtown, which took his money 
and name. From this small, yet early laid founda- 
tion. Harvard College has since got up several Storeys ; 
and altliough Sparks have been applied to the edifice, 
it still stands, like a tower set on a hill, diffusing its 
learned light to Holmes happy and genial, reaching 
upward to Longfellow, and even illuminating men 
Whittier than he. 

We have now briefly traced the settlements of five 
of the New England States, bringing down their liis- 
tory to 1643, when, with the exception of spunky 
Ehode Island, they formed their first union against 
the witty but out-witted French of Acadia on the 
northeast, the trading, solid Dutch of Manhattan, and 
the universally hostile Indian tribes, whose enmity 
now became in the inverse ratio of their hunting- 
grounds. The sixth of these States, Vermont, came 
late and strugglingiy among her brothers and sisters. 
Both New York and New Hampshire j)outed and 
grumbled at the appearance of the new-comer, and 
threatened to smother her in the cradle. But the 
child, fed on simple food, and breathing the healthy 



OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE NEW ENGLAND STATES. 125 

air of the Green Mountains, grew apace after its birtli 
in 1724, and got such a good Constitution in 1777, 
that she at length acquired all her rights ; and what by 
fishing in the Connecticut, hunting among her ever- 
green hills, and keeping to her mutton and her last, 
she looked as she sat in the old continental school- 
house as fresh, blooming, and thrifty as any. Vermont 
early sent away her surplus beef and swine, but she 
kept plenty of pluck at home. 

It is sometimes said that if the Western States had 
been first discovered. New England would never have 
been settled at all ; but this seeming reproach upon the 
hard and stern features of New England soil and cli- 
mate warms into a compliment when we see what 
fabrics of iron, cotton, and woollen have been conjured 
from her narrow means, what wealth dangles from her 
hooks, what oil she gets without blubbering, what a 
clean white marble face she puts on our houses and 
stores, and what nutmegs and tropical wonders she 
picks up from her beeches and haze-le bushes, and 
what seasoning she distributes to spice our tables with 
literary condiments. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. 

The Spirits of the Age present at its Foundation. — Who they were and 
liow they were affected. — The Wonders of .Alanhattan in September, 
1609. — How the Animal, Vegetable, Ornithological, Maritime, and 
Human Productions then compared with those now. — What New 
York Lots were worth two hundred and sixty Years ago. — Their 
Owners. — Hudson's Trip up the River. — What he saw and did n't 
see. — The four Dutch Governors; their Doings and Misdoings.— 
Sketch of Holland and the Characteristics which she impressed upon 
New Amsterdam. — Bravery evinced in settling Brooklyn. — How the 
Van Rensselaers and other Vans were enticed hither. — The Troubles 
and Sorrows of Wonter Van Twiller and William Kieft. — Of the 
Surrender of the Dutch, and the Instalment of English Rule in New 
York. — Petrus Stuyvesant retires from Business. — His Farm and 
what he raised on it. 

" 'T^HE spirit of the age," says Bancroft, " was pres- 
J- ent when the foundations of New York were 
laid." More justly might it be said that a good deal 
of spirits, including a fair amount of Holland schnaps, 
put up in long gray-colored jugs, was there, carried on 
shore by order of the honest skipper of the Half- 
Moon, and duly distriliuted on the auspicious occasion. 
Tlie corner-stone of the Western metropolis was laid by 
a mason employed by the Dutch East India Company, 
whose wide breeches, glittering knee-buckles, and 
large slouched hat, set off by a smart feather, seemed 
to the straight-limbed, wondering Algonquins, as they 
huddled in friendly curiosity around him, to belong to 



THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YOKK. 



127 




^■^^ ^^- 






-^ 



128 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

some well-fed, fat Mercury, fresh from a distant Olym- 
pus, taking a pleasant trip to their simple island. 

The spirits were not enclosed in a corner-stone, as is 
customary at these raisings, but were more judiciously 
used by the sagacious Hendrick Hudson among the 
bewildered spectators. 

Beautiful were the sights which greeted the eye of 
the adventurous Dutch navigator, as on the twenty- 
third day of September, 1609, he cast anchor in the 
broad bay of New York. On every side the shores 
were feathered by woods, freshly painted by the liberal 
hand of an American autumn. The varied trees, the 
golden wiHow, the scarlet sumach, the red and white 
maples, the sassafras, mixing with the oaks and 
beeches and the birch, — unassociated as yet with 
schools or discipline, — had begun to blaze in their va- 
ried gorgeous hues, and their leaves to cover the ground 
with carpets of beautiful patterns. Upon the branches 
climbed vines that fell from tree to tree, draping tliem 
in garments whose innocent height rivalled those of 
the Indians who found shelter beneath them. 

Through these woods the mocking-bird trilled its 
varied song, its original strains almost as liquid and 
sweet as those of its mimic successor, the unfeathered 
biped w^ho now lures the modern New-Yorker to 
greenly arching saloons, and there exchanges notes 
with him. The humming-bird, too, darted in sparkles 
through the leafy avenues, — not as now carried upon 
the top of a lady's head, but dipping its own bill in the 
wild flowers that hung through all the Boweries of 
Manhattan. Pigeons, unplucked, sped unhurt through 
all the saloons of nature. Doves, not those mellifluous 



THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. 129 

names that invite to restaurants, and there present 
their dear bills to the stranger, but the gayly plumed 
and round -necked birds, cooed in the thickets. 
Coveys of quails occupied the place of those other 
coveys, which, turned to jail-birds, now flutter behind 
bars. Here and there troops of wild turkey wheeled 
in long circles, instead of dangling, as now, by one 
leg in front of a Broadway market. 

In the untroubled waters oysters made their o^vn 
beds, and tucked themselves in as they saw fit, undis- 
turbed by the injurious names of hard shell which a 
party of frogs or others might croak out around them. 
The opossum had not yet lent its name to deceitful 
concealments, but openly showed its offspring in its 
domestic pouch. 

Turtles, although wearing the green, innocently 
walked around with their feet upon the honest earth, 
instead of spreading them upwards in the air, with 
their backs uneasily indorsing the city's dirty side- 
walks, their office-like fatness attracting the liquorish 
eye of some gourmand. 

Even the bears licked their own cubs with innocent 
delight, not only in Wall Street, but in all the un- 
walled places in and about New York. The thrifty 
otter — the only banker on the whole island — made 
his deposits in safety ; nor was he frightened, as he slowly 
accumulated the savings of his well-spent life, by the 
lively sallies of the jackdaw, carrying ever with him 
the burglarious instruments of his trade ; nor heeded 
the harmless slanders of the woodpecker, as he gratified 
his strange taste in finding out and exploring the ten- 
der or rotten character of the neiuhboriniij trees. 
6* I 



130 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

In keeping with these sylvan and rustic scenes were 
the native owners. They disdained the waste of time 
.involved in the frequent change of dress ; appearing in 
the same costume, morning and evening. Nothing 
could be in greater contrast than the simj^le toilets 
of these proprietors of the island of Manhattan and 
their painted successors of our own day. The few men 
who owned the 141,486 lots into which the surface of 
New York City is now triturated, seemed, in the plain- 
ness of their attire and manners, to be only squatters 
upon a territory not their own, nor carried their feath- 
ered lieads half as high as the modern trader in tape 
and calico, squeezed into a space often only sixteen feet 
and eight inches wide by one hundred deep. Children 
were kept in due subordination. Instead of attending 
parties or clubs, they were quietly hung upon a nail 
at the door of the Avigwam ; the heir of a square mile 
being suspended in unwhimpering silence, until his 
grave progenitors took their fiU of nuts and sleep. 
There were no complaints of taxes, dirty streets, very 
common councils, or cheating at elections. 

The uncertainty and tediousness of legal proceed- 
ings were unknown. The plaintiff was his own attor- 
ney, jury, judge, and sheriff; deciding the case sum- 
marily, and doing execution on the defendant between 
sunset and sunrise. 

Lingering only a few days among these primitive 
inhabitants, — shooting game, doubtless, from the an- 
cient trees occupying the very spot at the corner of 
Nassau and Wall Streets, where, in less than one hun- 
dred and eighty years afterwards, the first Federal Con- 
gress met, where, four years after that meeting, Wash- 



THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. 131 

ington was inaugurated President, and where, a few 
generations later, more money was daily disbursed 
than would have sufficed to buy aU the then settle- 
ments of America, Hudson turned his little craft of 
eighty tons up the river which has since borne his 
name. Banks, since famous for historic events; or 
wed to literary matings, happy and dear, attracted 
for forty leagues -his i)leased attention. Wealth and 
taste have since embossed cities, towns, cultured vdlas, 
and grounds upon these shores; fringed them with 
varied foliage native and exotic, and thrown over them 
all the lace-like illusions of legends, stories, poetic 
fancies, and fairy-tales ; but to the simple, honest eyes 
of Hudson nothing had ever presented itself more 
wonderful than that ever unrolling panorama of wood 
and wave, dripping with the intense and varied colors 
with which nature saturates and transfigures our 
autumnal woods. 

The bosky reaches of Hoboken ; the Palisades with 
their high, massive walls propping up the sky, which 
leans as lovingly as heaven can upon New Jersey 
without being taken for railroad purposes ; the placid 
waters, since named Spuyten Duyvil, which parted 
Manhattan from the main-land, and sent back from its 
weU-framed looking-glass, promontory and foliaged 
steeps, laced with scarlet vines ; tlie gentle slopes of 
Westchester, sliding into the sea-like river, unwounded 
by rails, and innocent of the foul-mouthed smoke of 
candle-factories ; the long-curving bays of Eockland, 
adorned with crimson capes, pinned with rocky points, 
yet so as advantageously to show off their bare 
shoulders ; the native site of Sunnyside, where after 



132 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

dwelt the gentle, lainb-like Irving, as true and loyal 
a soul as was ever lent to men to draw them up 
where late he went back himself; the grand, majestic 
Highlands, with their muster-roll of glories, pennoned 
with crimson banners hung out from every rock- 
anchored fort of nature, among them Cro' Nest, the 
home of that Culprit Fay, whose love treason has been 
pardoned before so many domestic tribunals ; the 
lake-like bay of New-Burgh, so well sentinelled by 
its double sentry of shores, which challenge sharply 
every passer-by ; and the dentating, curved shores that 
stretch in slow haste northwards ; often channelled by 
playful brooks that lay their kissful obedience into the 
loving lap of the mother river, or were clasped by 
bracelets of burning maples, whose clustered garnets 
shone on her rounded arms, — all these varied charms 
quite intoxicated the sober Hudson, keeping him con- 
stantly on deck, and causing heavy draughts on the 
ship's supply of Schiedam. 

He brought to the Half-lMoon off the present city 
of Hudson, — then altogether too young to present 
him with its freedom in a box ; and in a small boat 
was rowed up the fresh waters of the river beyond, as 
far as Albany, — the Trojans assert as far as Troy ; 
but in this a-bridge-d compendium we cannot pause 
to lay our hands on the necessary documents to settle 
this question. 

Suffice it to say that there being no legislature in 
session at Albany, lie got away without being fleeced, 
or even being obliged to listen to a speech from the 
speaker. He was also spared a sight of the collection 
in the Agricultural Hall, and thus kept his favorable 



THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. 133 

opinion of the soil and its capacity. His report to his 
employers, on his return in No\'einber following, was 
such as to stimulate the company to send another 
vessel the next year to trade with the natives ; a 
trade which was conducted too much on the " heads I 
win, tails you lose " system to be other than advan- 
tageous to the Batavian pedlers. A few of the traders 
remained, opening stores in the slow settlement of 
New Amsterdam ; putting up a windmill in what is 
now Pearl Street, raising the wind very easily, and 
taking as generous a toll from the Indian grists, as the 
natives now take from the strangers who frequent the 
island in search of bargains. Tlie settlement grew 
then, as now, by importation ; for although its trade 
increased, it was not until 1625 that the first white 
cliild was born within the present limits of the State. 
The growth of the place, however, was such, that in 
1613, Samuel Argal, returning from an expedition 
against the French settlement of Port Eoyal, ^^'as at- 
tracted into the liarbor of New Amsterdam, where, 
finding several huts and the windmill, he compelled 
an allegiance, during his two days stay, to England. 
The arbitrary principles of James I.^ however, were 
too repulsive to the sturdy Dutch to make them ad- 
liere to this allegiance longer than the existence of the 
force which compelled it. The Eepublic of the United 
Netherlands, twisted together of the two strands, fur- 
nished the one by the religious freedom generated by 
the Eeformation under Luther, and the other drawn 
out by the mailed hand of William of Orange from 
the hard clutch of Pliilip IT. of Spain, lield by its 
strong yet soft cord the early emigrants from it to 



134 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




^^im 



v 



X. r 0-fc'.- 



N * 



THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. 135 

New Netherlands to an affectionate loyalty and love 
for itself. In no country is patriotism stronger than 
in Holland. Small in dimensions, struggling against 
the whole force of the sea on the north, from whose 
overwhelming devastation it is only saved by dikes, 
anchored by gigantic stones brought from Norway, 
and built up from thirty to fifty feet higher than the 
land they guard ; its flat meadow surface, ever moist 
with water, divided by canals which serve the purposes 
both of fences and roads in other lands, and through 
which the water is kept flowing by a wonderful and 
hourly worked system of pumping, — this little state, 
conquered from the sea by industry, from Spain and 
the Inquisition by bravery unmatched, from a moneyed 
aristocracy by incessant vigilance, stood a peer among 
the largest and proudest monarchies of Europe. Her 
traders carried their square-rigged, heavy sterned ships 
in every port from the Cape of Good Hope to Lap- 
land ;. and Amsterdam drew bills of exchange against 
shipments of linen and woollen goods, manufactured 
by herself, and of spices imported from her East India 
possessions, upon every commercial city in the world. 
The sea-fowl that drifted across her bright, sparkling 
meadows daily from the ocean, which she held at 
arm's-length, — although rolling its white surf higher 
than the chimneys of her houses, — could take a bird's- 
eye view of a population the thriftiest, of cities the 
most prosperous, of homes the most comfortable, in 
Europe. While Dutch enterprise thus built up a hap- 
py state at home, and sent thriving colonies abroad, 
her scholars were advancing the republic of letters, and 
giving international law to the world. Grotius at tliis 



136 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

time defined the rights and duties of war, and helped 
to bridle its atrocities by bits liammered from the 
sickles and reaping-hooks of peace. No wonder, then, 
that the thick-set burghers of Utrecht, Haarlaem, Ley- 
den, Eotterdam, and Amsterdam, although transferred 
to a newer Amsterdam, clung with pride to their na- 
tive land, damp though it was in every pore ; and that 
the square vrouw gratefully preserved her family recol- 
lections along with her thickly quilted petticoats, her 
oleycooks, krulers, and her own dark, well-aired com- 
plexion. 

The government of the settlement was, although 
commercial in its aims and purposes, very maternal, 
whether under the East India Company, which 
lasted until 1623, or under the West India Com- 
pany, which then succeeded it with larger powers and 
authority. Under the last company Peter Minuit was 
sent out as tlie first governor, in 1625. 

The same year some enterprising Hollanders cour- 
ageously passed the East Eiver, and bravely encoun- 
tered the perils of a residence in Brooklyn, from 
whose Heights so many now look down upon the 
parent city of New York, — an unhappy type of our 
civilization in private life. 

As yet all was serene in the infant colony of New 
Amsterdam, as if the lunar influence of the Half- 
Moon still shone upon its peaceful trade and growing 
profits. Invitations were sent to the people of 
Massachusetts Bay and their children in the valley 
of the Connecticut to come and take tea ; and they in 
turn courteously asked the Amsterdamers to eat clam- 
chowder and pumpkin-pie, adding, however, at the 



THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. 137 

bottom of the note, that they hoped, for reasons which 
they gave, that their guests would not bring with them 
any beaver-skins to swap with the Indians around 
Narragansett Bay. 

The next year, 1626, Governor Minuit made a large 
real estate transaction, purchasing the whole island of 
Manhattan from the Indians for twenty-four dollars, 
— a deed without a name in the annals of American 
settlements. As the purchase embraced fourteen 
thousand square acres, we leave it to the millions of 
advanced juvenile readers who, we expect, will use 
this history in schools, to cipher out the price per 
acre ; while a still more forward class might deter- 
mine the amount of land which such a sum would 
now procure in Wall or Nassau Streets. In 1629 the 
Dutch West India Company, in order to entice the 
Van Eensselaers, Van Vechtens, Van Warts, Van 
Wycks, Brinkerhoofs, and other brown-colored dwell- 
ers at home, away from their tulip-beds, canals, and 
storks, to the growing young colony, promised to any 
fifty persons who would settle upon it a tract of land 
upon the Hudson Eiver sixteen miles in length, annex- 
ing only two conditions, — that the settlers should pur- 
chase the lands of the Indians, and make due pro- 
vision for the minister and school-teacher. 

Under this promise four companies, headed each by 
a leader, or patroon, settled the southern half of the 
present State of Delaware ; for the Dutch claim ex- 
tended from Cape Henlopen on the south to Cape 
Cod. 

The next year an agent of the Van Eensselaers 
purchased a tract twelve miles square below Albany, 



138 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

paying for it in goods, — a tract which had many- 
blank pages, over which contentious pens have been 
scribbling, sometimes with red ink, within the living 
memory of our readers. 

AVith prosperity came, as usual, care and trouble. 
Complaints were made of Minuit. The Yankees on 
the east, and the Swedes on the Delaware, were jeal- 
ous of Dutch rule, and stickled for their own institu- 
tions, political and social. The fort, established by 
Minuit at Hartford, was like a piano-forte in an in- 
convenient place, strongly objected to, and its airs 
raised a brisk breeze around it. 

Finally, in 1633, Peter was requested to give up 
his stewardship ; and Wouter van Twiller, or the 
Doubter, took the seals of office and all the other seals 
he could lay hands on. Minuit could not, however, 
remain quiet. Office, as usual, had produced a rest- 
lessness which office medicine only could cure. He 
went to Europe, and brought out a company of Swedes, 
and settled with them at Christiana, near AVilming- 
ton, naming the place after the girlish Queen of 
Sweden. The prolific Swedes spread northwards, and 
gratefully named their territory New Sweden, — a 
territory stretching, defiant of New Netherlands, and 
planting its northern line as near as Trenton. The 
Doubter was too undecided to face their decided ad- 
vances ; and was replaced, in 1638, by William Kieft, 
the third overseer of the Dutch plantations. 

One of Kieft's first acts was to protest against the 
Minuit, or Swedish jig, which Peter was dancing with 
his lively company on the Delaware. The protest 
was, like so many others since issued from New York, 



THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. 139 

only made a note of, but left unheeded. Sharper pro- 
tests, backed by bayonets and knapsacks provisioned 
with good long sausages, were, two years later, made 
against the Indians of Long Island, who, egged on by 
the Swedes of the south, and the sleek Pilgrims on 
the Connecticut, kindled their fires on Staten Island, 
and threatened to eat their omelets in New Amster- 
dam itself For five long years were those Indian 
eggs and the colony over the fire. At last the Iro- 
quois called away the coppery cooks, and the boiling- 
waters simmered dow^n again. The colony enlarged 
itself. Broom-corn waved along the Mohawk Eiver ; 
Dutch pigs were made into head -cheese in Schenec- 
tady ; and Dutch cabbages, sweltered in large hogs- 
heads, came out sour-kraut for purple-colored families 
all up the valley, still so plentifully sprinkled with 
Dutch hamlets, baptized with genuine Holland names. 
The warm hearts of the colonists blunted Indian hos- 
tilities, as their thick heads, almost impenetrable to 
anything but three meals a day, defied their toma- 
hawks. 

In 1647 Kieft was recalled, and Peter Stu}^esant 
reigned in his stead. His combustible temper was 
kept constantly crackling, like a bunch of fire-crackers, 
during the sixteen years he headed the Dutch settle- 
ments in America. His wooden leg, like Santa Anna's 
in our own day, seemed ever stirring up the fires to 
renewed blazes. On all sides he was scorched. The 
wood, long seasoning, piled up by the colonists in Con- 
necticut, and in the territory since divided up into 
Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, was kin- 
dled into a hot flame. Permission to the former, in 



140 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

1650, to extend their settlements up to Oyster Bay 
on Long Island, and to Greenwich on the main-land, 
only whet their appetites for other kinds of oysters 
and new beds. Five years later, and the fiery Stuy- 
vesant led a regiment of six hundred men against 
Christiana, and, reducing it to silence, brought his 
victorious troops back again ; the colony now having 
a liberal supply of candidates for all its offices for that 
generation. AVhether the burgomaster of New Am- 
sterdam and the iive scheppens took occasion of the 
return of these troops to vote themselves suppers, 
medals, and free rides around the island, is very 
doubtful, as contemporary accounts are mute on the 
subject. 

At last even Dutch patience became weary of wars 
with the Indians and disputes with all the neighbor- 
ing colonies. The growing political privileges, won by 
the vigilant perseverance of those colonies, — the right 
of representation in assemblies, — the larger immuni- 
ties from home taxation, attracted their attention, so 
that in 1664, when Charles II. granted, however 
unjustly, to his brother, the Duke of York, the 
whole country, from the Connecticut Kiver to the 
Delaware, — including, of course, the Dutch settle- 
ments, — and Nichols, the duke's lieutenant, in Sep- 
tember of that year, anchoring before New Amster- 
dam, asked the peppery Stuyvesant to hand over, the 
wishes of the inhabitants for change was so great, 
that the governor, although disposed to resist, found 
no backers ; and so, after stumping around for several 
hours among his councillors, was obliged to cut his 
stick into a pen, and sign a document, transferring 



THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. 141 

the American Empire of their High Mightinesses, the 
States General, to the royal English Duke. So ended 
the political dominion of Holland in America. The 
iron feet of the statue were, however, firmly planted 
on the soil of New York, although tlie upper parts of 
the figure have been cast in other metals, and moulded 
by Saxon, Celtic, Teutonic, and Gallic hands. 

Tlie last Dutch governor, let us add, gracefully sub- 
mitted to the English sway, living in his ample house 
in the Bowery until his death, happy in his farm, 
wdiich then grew cliestnuts instead of men, and was 
tracked by cows and calves, sheep and lambs, instead 
of the iron tracks which now spike New York to its 
rocky bed, whose sheets are balance sheets, and whose 
covering is the dirty blankets which its unconscien- 
tious Mrs. Gamps throw over her. 



142 



CHAPTEE VI. 



THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW JERSEY. 
A spirited Sketch of the Way in which it was done, and the Results. 




CHAPTEE VII. 

THE SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA. 

Governments in their Action like Pianos. — Thie Reason ; and illustrating 
Examples. — Varieties in the Make-ups of the different Settlers in the 

Colonies. — Character of Penn, and why it improves by Ao-e. His 

Accomphshments. — His first Visit to America in 1681. —Tall Talk 
and Peace. — Philadelphia, its early and late Characteristics.— Dela- 
w.are sets up for herself. — Penn in Prison. — Again in Pennsylvania. 
— Returns to England by the Philadelphia Line. — Pennsylvania leaps 
into the Eighteenth Century, and what she does there. 

GOVEENMENTS and states, like pianos, go ac- 
cording to the works originally put into them. 
Unlike the grand-action instruments of the Carolinas, 
manufactured in the princely factory of Lord Shaftes- 
bury and John Locke, dissimilar to the violin move- 
ment of the New England States, the banjo airs of 
Virginia, or " the harp with a thousand strings " set 
up in New York, the government of Pennsylvania 
combined the sweetness of the seolian harp and the 
free harmonious breathings of the accordion. And 
the music which Penn drew from it was such as 
" soothed the savage breast " ; for Pennsylvania was 
the only American settlement which never heard the 
whirr of the Indian an-ow through her woods, or the 
sidlen blow of the death-dealing tomahawk in the 
settler's hut. 

To complete the mosaic pavement of our American 
house, all kinds of materials seemed necessary. In 



144 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




POKTKAIT OF PeNN. 



THE SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA. 145 

South Carolina, French Huguenots ; in Georgia, Ogle- 
thorpe the loyalist, with loyal settlers ; in North 
Carolina, English yeomanry ; in Virginia, supporters 
of the Episcopal Establishment and the partisans of 
the Stuarts ; in Maryland, Roman Catholics, imbued 
with the largest spirit of toleration ; in DelaAvare and 
New Jersey, the countrymen of Gustavus Adolphus, 
ali^'e with Protestantism and mechanical invention ; 
in New England, the representatives of Presbyterian- 
ism, Independency, and Anabaptists, in church in- 
tolerantly tolerant of those who differed from them, 
and jealous liberals in state matters, — an epitome of 
tlie various dissenting and freedom-claiming classes in 
England during the important era of the decade which 
preceded and succeeded the Commonwealth ; in New 
York, the sturdy burghers of Holland, commercial, 
Protestant, and free, mixed with Englishmen who 
believed in kingly prerogative as they did in tlie 
Thirty-nine Articles ; and now the drab peaceful 
Quakers, cherishing the inner light, simple in speech 
and garb, wise in their worldly wisdom, yet harmless 
as doves, firm, yet not defiant, keeping on their hats in 
presence of dignitaries, yet servants to the lowliest in 
the bonds of truth and love. 

Wniiam Penn is one of the few characters, which, 
wine-like, improves by age. His cask was filled with 
pure juices of the grape, grown in honest soils, and 
ripened by the natural sun. Tested in every way, it 
shows no adulterations. 

Descended from a father at once gifted by nature 
and ennobled by services to the state, which it could 
not requite ; himself favored with large wealth ; bred 



146 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

at Oxford University ; a law student of Lincoln's 
Inn ; a sagacious and ol.)serving traveller over aU 
Europe ; skilled in all manly accomplishments, in- 
cluding swimming and the use of the broadsword ; 
the friend of Sir Isaac Newton, of Algernon Sidney, 
and Lord William Eussell, — he exhibited that rare 
union, a moral courage that dared to live out his con- 
victions, although counter to those with whom he 
associated and although leading him to prison and 
severe persecution, and a gentleness of speech and 
manner that persuaded all whom he met, not only of 
his own personal honesty, but of the truth of his prin- 
ciples. 

In 1681 he obtained from Charles II. a grant of 
all the lands embraced in the present limits of Penn- 
sylvania ; and in the following autumn he came out 
to prospect his large unfenced farm. Sailing up the 
Delaware, over fins whose ancestors had preceded him 
by centuries, and between banks colonized sparsely by 
Finns and Swedes thirty-nine years before, he landed 
at New Castle. 

His open, sunny face, then browned with thirty- 
eight summers, warmed even the Indians toward him, 
in the frosty month of November ; and thus trickled 
their confidence and trust: "You are our brothers. 
' We will leave a broad path for you and us to Avalk in. 
If an Englishman falls asleep in the path, the Indian 
shall pass him by and say : ' He is an Englishman ; he 
is asleep ; let him alone.' The path shall be plain ; 
there shall not be in it a stump to hurt the feet." 

At the junction of the Schuylkill and Delaware 
rivers, — a triangle since often worked at by people 



THE SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA. 



147 

















148 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

who, wanting his simplicity, have tried so to draw 
their lines as to prove that an acute angle is larger 
than the other two, even if those two be very obtuse, 
— at this place he halted to work out the problem of 
a city to be governed by brotherly love. He found 
clumps of pine, chestnut, and walnut trees, — names 
which grew to the streets which displaced them. Dis- 
liking crowded towns, which he had found to be but 
nurseries of vice, he desired liis city to be planted with 
gardens round each house, so as to form "a greene 
countrie towue." The jealous rivals of the Quaker 
Emporium assert that he succeeded in carrying out 
his plan. 

He was not pen-urious; but paid the natives for 
their lands. Peace, Penn, and plenty prevailed 
through all the borders of the baby settlement. In 
two years, twenty-five hundred wood-colored bonnets 
and broad-brims could be counted of a Sunday in the 
loving city. Unlike most of the other young settle- 
ments, the neck of land between the two rivers on 
which Penn's pet stood was not wrung by famine 
or by the hand of political oppression. In March, 
1683, Penn granted to the assembly, held in the grow- 
ing town, an ample charter of liberty. The next year 
he made a trip to Europe, taking the " Philadelphia 
line," which, fortunately for him, did not break before 
he reached shore. 

In 1691 the three counties, now forming the State 
of Delaware, and of which Penn had procured a con- 
veyance, took it in their heads to try their own luck at 
housekeeping, and set up a separate kitchen of their 
own. Penn wished them pot-luck ; and off they went 



THE SETTLEMENT OF PENNSYLVANIA. 149 

in high glee, cultivating their own Pea Patch and sow- 
ing their own oats to their heart's content. 

The next year Penn was deprived of his government 
and shut up in prison for two years. For some time 
William and Mary, it was supposed, had a taste for 
his head served up cb la John the Baptist ; but this 
dish was at last thought to be too expensive for the 
English constitution, and so the ruffles around Penn's 
neck were untroubled. 

In 1699 Penn again visited his North American 
estate, took an account of stock, gave presents of all 
the political privileges they asked for, and went home 
again, for the last time, in high feather. 

Meanwhile the young colony leaped vigorously over 
into the eighteenth century, found its supply of anthra- 
cile coal sufficient for a good house-warming, invited 
over Dutch, Germans, Norwegians, and Swedes, with 
their large horses, heavily tired wagons, and never- 
tiring heavy wives, wdio settled down on the whole 
territory so solidly that neither they nor it could ever 
be moved from that day to this. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE COLONIES IN THE UPPER HALF OF THE SEVEN- 
TEENTH CENTURY. 

The Young Colonies watched by the " Old Folks at Home." — Required 
to furnish Inventories of their Property. — Old People particular as to 
Shops where the Youngsters traded. — Several Articles of Political 
Housekeeping, as Printing-Presses, Jury-Boxes, etc., not allowed. — 
Some Favorites among the Children. — The first American Ring. — 
Cromwell as a Step- Father. — The Atlantic Swimming-Bath. — Polit- 
ical Rights jarred off the Parent Tree; others fell when ripe. — Some 
Proprietors sell out to raise Money for Costs. — General Thaw in High 
Places. — Legislative Mills with two Runs of Stone. — Woman's Rights 
in Capsules. — How hard Puritan Wood got softer. — Episcopal Race- 
Courses enlarged. — A Black Frost curls up the Green Leaves of the 
Charters. — What Sir Edmund Andros swallowed and the Fit of In- 
digestion which followed. — Effect of European Housecleaning in setting 
Colonial Brooms in Motion. — New York swept into the English Pan. 
— Result of James II.'s Over-stay in Paris. — Slaps in the Face of 
Canada and their Return. — How Public Events tell on Family Mat- 
ters tolled long and loud. — People occasionally subject to Scarlet 
Fever and Fourth of July, but can't live on either. — Kidd at Sea; 
takes off a few People. — How the Deficiency was supplied. — Num- 
ber of Colonists at close of Seventeenth Century. — Would have been 
more had Chicago started. — Colonial Colts at the Bars of the Eighteenth 
Century. 

BY the middle of the seventeenth century, the 
young colonial damsels from England, Holland, 
Sweden, and Germany had, in the main, obtained 
comfortable and satisfactory settlements along the At- 
lantic slopes. The jealous " old folks at home " kept 
a strict watch on their doings, and sent servants to 
look after their ways. Here and there some stolen 



THE COLONIES. 151 

interviews with that very disreputable acquaintance. 
Legislative Liberty, had been detected; and the ser- 
vants were especially charged to keep both eyes upon 
any renewal of such improprieties. Frequent inven- 
tories of property were insisted on. All the house- 
hold stuff was required to be bought at the home 
shops ; and, what hurt the feelings and interests of the 
young people more than anything else, they were for- 
bidden even to send back what they did not want to use 
themselves, unless in ships built and despatched from 
England for them. There were some articles, as print- 
ing-presses, jury-boxes, etc., wliich were deemed by the 
anxious j^arents as particularly unnecessary and even 
improper. Two whims there were, which the young- 
sters had of late got into their heads, that they were 
repeatedly enjoined to banish, once for all : namely, the 
notion of electing somebody to go and meet somebody 
else and have a tallv over that foolish and altogether 
unsatisfactory subject the taxes ; and that other equally 
absurd fancy of counting over occasionally the loose 
change collected for public pm-poses. They told them 
that such things were above their years, and that, in 
fact, they knew nothing about them; and moreover, 
that such whimsies had made a great deal of trouble 
even among the wiser heads on the old island, and, if 
indulged in, would be sure to bring their progeny into 
bad habits and to worse ends. These injunctions and 
warnings of course only increased curiosity, led to 
talks across the dinner-table and in the evenings after 
the day's work was over. The more they talked it 
over, the more, of course, they set their hearts upon 
having the forbidden fruit. It was found that Vir- 



152 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ginia had enjoyed the dangerous luxuries of sending 
two men from every one of her eleven boroughs to do 
both these improper things, ever since she was twelve 
years old. She, too, had been permitted to have a 
jury-box, and liked the music of it right well, although 
some of the twelve strings sometimes got out of order, 
and the instrument occasionally played too long when 
badly wound up. Favoritism in a family is never 
pleasant for the unfavored ones. The others could not 
see why they should not have what Virginia was 
allowed. The subject became at last a sore one, and 
several times ended in angry flushes and muttered 
adjectives that went off without any nouns to touch 
them ; some into the air, and some — we are forced to 
say — right into tlie faces of the old people. 

Cromwell, that brusk English step-father, who, 
after the sudden taking off of his predecessor, Charles 
I., vigorously seized the cold hand of Albion, had his 
favorites among the step-children, the New-England- 
ers. Yet he did not hesitate to trounce them as 
soundly as he did Virginia and the two Carolinas, 
whenever they set up their wills against his. It was 
he who, in 1651, tied up all the colonies by those 
leading-strings, the Navigation Acts. When Charles 
II. came into the family, these colonial cords were not 
cut, but multiplied and tied into knots, not at all 
sailor fashion. In fact, whoever ruled the house, 
Commonwealth, Stuart, or Orange, strengthened and 
doubled these vexatious marine strings, until finally 
father and children were threatened with the fate of 
Laocoon. 

The large swimming-bath of the Atlantic, so near 



THE COLONIES. 



153 




\\\ 



154 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

their doors, sorely tempted the yoimg swimmers ; but 
the old people insisted upon nothing so much as the 
maxim, not to go into the waters of commerce until 
they had learned to swim, and never to begin to learn 
an art so perilous to — themselves. In fact, the entire 
maritime policy of England towards the colonies was 
very dry nursing on very wet principles. 

At one time, Virginia was the pet, and got several 
sugar-plums from royal bounty. Then Connecticut 
came in for some caressing. The younger Winthrop 
presented to Charles II., in 1662, a petition for a new 
toy, — a charter. He would have been refused, but 
that he slipped in, at the same time, a ring given to his 
own grandfather by the father of Charles, which so 
pleased the dress-loving king, that he gave to Con- 
necticut one of the best charter hobby-horses ever 
seen at that time in America. This, it may be re- 
marked, is the earliest example in our history of what 
" a ring " can effect. 

We cannot record in detail the successive struggles 
of the Colonies to free themselves from political 
and commercial restrictive rules, — for riglits of repre- 
sentation in assemblies of their own, for the privi- 
lege of taxing themselves, and spending their own 
assessments, and for the many solid and large free- 
"Homs which we now enjoy without question or fear. 
The story of the way in wliich the cellar was dug, 
through obstructions of root and stone, the walls 
sunk, the beams of the lower floor, hewn out amid dis- 
couragements and opposition, laid and primed, ought 
not to be otherwise than pleasant, even when re- 
hearsed to those who have long and securely revelled 



THE COLONIES. 155 

in all the comforts and luxuries of the completed 
building ; in its hot and cold water baths of free dis- 
cussion ; the numerous call-pipes through the wall, for 
public servants ; the cedar closets for the best clothes 
of liberty ; the iron safe for the family silver or green- 
backs ; the gas-pijies of illuminating knowledge ; and 
the varied upholstery to soothe labor-aching limbs, or 
to gratify luxurious and even extravagant tastes. But 
space, bke nobility, obliges ; and altliough, like those 
experts who write the Lord's Prayer on a sixpence, we 
can condense Genesis on the smallest historic disk, we 
cannot crowd all creation on the rim of the same 
piece. Speaking in a general way, however, we may 
affirm that for forty years preceding the accession of 
James II. in 1685, the Colonies, on the whole, steadily 
gained from jealous political privilege and chartered 
monopoly some of the rights enjoyed at home. As 
these rights fell, one after another, upon colonial 
soil, they were carefully secured by strong hands. 
Sometimes they were jarred suddenly from the parent 
tree by the iron hand of war. Sometimes they fell 
carelessly, like great, golden pippins, over the royal 
enclosure into the king's highway, ripe and well 
flavored. Sometimes they matured naturally under 
the very eyes of those keepers of the royal Transatlan- 
tic preserves, — the colonial governors,^ — and when 
mellow, were seized and hurried out of reach until it 
was safe to give them to the hungry people. 

Thus, in various ways, by different liands and from 
different parts of the colonial orchard, the precious 
fruit was gathered for present or future use. 

In some of the plantations the proprietors, those 



15G THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 
'• Gentlemen of England, who sat at home in ease," 

expecting their stone ships to come in, filled with 
promised colonial stuff for presents to their children, 
became tired of waiting, and sold out their large airy 
bills of lading for very small earthly- crowns sterling. 
In other Colonies the heirs of the original grantees, 
after spending all their ready means in lawsuits with 
the hard-working settlers, videlicet, " squatters," guilty 
in complainants' eyes, not only of "disturbing the 
peace of our lord the King," but of attempting to 
appropriate unlawfully a piece of his colonial king- 
dom, compromised, as other parties have before done, 
for sums barely sufficient to cover the costs of litiga- 
tion. In a few instances, suitors to the affections of 
the coy colonial heiresses, thinking by courtly ways to 
acquire their landed possessions and the conanion-law 
right to govern their persons, were dismissed with 
good-natured assurances that they should continue to 
look upon them as friends, but declined any more 
intimate relationships. In a few other cases still — 
like those of William Penn, Eoger Williams, and 
Cecil Calvert — the tenants were freely and generously 
left to manage their civil and political affairs, without 
suit, let, or hindrance, while individual conscience was 
erected into a high court of equity, with supreme 
jurisdiction in things spiritual. 

Eepresentative government took at first different 
forms. In some of the settlements legislative grists 
were put into a mortar and pounded out into a simple, 
healthy, easily digested, coarse meal. Maryland and 
jVIassachusetts set up more luxurious mills, provided 
with double runs of stone, — an upper and lower one. 



THE COLONIES. 157 

which was supposed to grind out a finer kind of legis- 
lative floui'. The brand, we need scarcely add, is now 
the popular American one, and is being, in limited 
amounts, exported for foreign use. 

In some of these establishments " bolts " were now 
and then introduced, by some bran-new representative 
miller, and expectations were immediately held out 
to the anxious customers of better hour, and of a 
whiter color, — expectations, we regret to add, that 
rarely came to anything except increased fatness to 
the miller's live stock, always grunting and grubbing 
around the mill doors. 

Woman's rights, too, thus early took root, sprouting 
out like young shoots from the old rotting stumps 
of a decaying civilization. Anne Hutchinson, — not 
Dickinson, — grieved in soul by the exclusion of her 
sex from the right to discuss and criticise, at the weekly 
meeting of the congregation, the last Sunday's dis- 
course, — a right now practised all over the world, — 
created by her fiery eloquence such a blaze in Massa- 
chusetts, that she soon made the Colony too hot for 
her. Sir Harry Vane, strange to say, did not turn the 
way that the wind blew ; but, although a governor 
and a baronet, veered against the current of hot air. 
Let reformers pluck from these pages a fragrant leaf 
pressed and preserved for their reading when faint. 
It was from this little seed-capsule, enwTapping a 
precious life, warmed by the heat of a woman's mind, 
there sprang up in a few years that beautiful flower of 
spiritual liberty that now sends its rippling odor from 
sea to sea. 

Thus in all high places of political power there was 



158 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




THE COLONIES. 159 

a general thaw of royal prerogative and proprietarial 
claim ; and popular rights trickled down upon the 
plain below. Galileo, in 1633, was condemned for 
asserting that the earth was a confirmed revolutionist ; 
yet even fifty years after there might have been 
wafted back over his tomb on the Arno, from the 
shores of the James, the Susquehanna, and even from 
the Merrimack, a wind-gram, iterating his own protest- 
ing words, " E pur il se muove." 

Yes, the world did move ! Even that hard part of it, 
crusted over with stern though earnest religious dog- 
mas, began to stir. Tlie austerity of Puritan faith, 
conscientious yet severe, which had worn the russet 
grimness which its own persecution in England had 
gathered around it — as hard woods, lying in damp, 
imi3risoning places, become clothed with fungus 
growths — began to feel some of the sunny effects 
of the Hutchinson illumination. In Virginia time 
and free discussion were wearing away the granite 
barriers within which its legislation and loyalty had 
always sought to hem into a single channel, the Epis- 
copal, the diverging streams of religious convictions. 

The narrow bigotries of the times, showing them- 
selves under different aspects, sprang naturally out of 
the various soUs in which the seeds had taken root. 
The early colonists of New England, escaping like the 
Jews from Egyptian bondage, and lit by flaming 
torches and cloudy providences to their promised 
land, compelled every one, Canaanite and Quaker, 
independent Philistine and non-conforming Episco- 
palian, to bring offerings to their cherished altar, under 
pain of banishment to the wilderness beyond. Those 



160 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

of Virginia, on the contrary, bringing with them their 
own lares and penates from their father's house, and 
fearing the introduction of strange deities, fenced in the 
sacred images with sharp picket-palings set by legal 
enactment. Over both, however, the new Evangel of 
toleration began to break, and voices of those " crying 
in the wilderness," divinely sent, cleaving with gentle 
strokes the consciences of thoughtful men, and heard 
around the altar and inside the guarded pickets, 
heralded the coming Emanuel. 

We have said that, up to the time of the accession 
of James II. in 1685, the fruits of civil liberty were 
gradually maturing in the growing settlements. 

Immediately after that event, however, a chilling 
black frost fell upon them, rolling up the green leaves 
of the charters and threatening to kill outright all the 
chance-sown trees, as well as the more promising cul- 
tivated grafts. During the three and a half years that 
this blight continued, the greater part of the popular 
governments were stunted or destroyed. The Con- 
necticut rocking-horse, conjured from King Charles II. 
by Winthrop's ring, was hid away in a hollow oak at 
Hartford. Sir Edmund Andros, a man of narrow 
spirit and keen temper, was sent out with instructions 
so large that he swallowed up the governments of all 
the New England Colonies and New York. A severe 
fit of indigestion followed, acidulating and fermentinp-, 
taking away the general appetite, and causing painful 
memories of the time when there were no heart-burn- 
ings and dangerous blood-rushings headward. And so, 
when in 1688 the Eevolution brought in the Orantre 
Prince, health bloomed again on the colonial cheek. 



THE COLONIES. 161 

and the constitution seemed to acquire a more vigor- 
ous tone than ever. 

The colonists had early learned the strength which 
comes from union. From 1643 onwards for forty 
years the New England settlements joined hands 
with each other against the French of New France 
and Acadia, the French Indian allies, and the Dutch 
of New York ; and while, like man and wife, they had 
their own healthy troubles, curtain lectures, poutings 
and make-ups, they stoutly defended the common 
home against all neighboring invasion. Persons once 
married are not apt to forget it, nor cease to sigh, 
after the tie is dissolved, for the benefits which accrued 
from it. The colonial widowers found it easier after- 
wards to contract a new union than the bachelor 
communities to form their first match. Eight years 
after the death of the first union the bereaved New- 
Englanders went out on a second courtship, — the 
trys ting -place being New York, — and there agreed 
upon a sort of runaway match to Canada. The honey- 
moon journey was not as pleasant as bridal trips 
through the Thousand Isles to Montreal and Quebec 
now are. In fact, although bound for Quebec, and 
even reaching it, they were not suffered by the French 
to enter it. They returned not over well pleased with 
each other, but particularly out of temper with the 
armed discourtesy of the French. 

This little trip away from home was not the first 
nor the last which the Colonies were led to make. In 
fact, our people from the very beginning seem to have 
been curiously addicted to foreign missionary efforts. 
They acquired the passion at the outset from European 



162 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

suggestions. Whenever the state skeins there got 
into a tangle, some of the outside threads were sure 
to run iiito a dreadful kink here. No sooner was 
there a scrubbing and house-cleaning among the old 
folks on the Thames, Seine, Scheldt, or Ehine, than 
the brooms were got out on the Hudson, the James, 
and Connecticut, and up they all went at that stand- 
ing bother of our colonial housewives, the nest of lively 
French flies in our northeast corner, or at those old 
yellow-legged Dutch hornets that had settled down on 
Manhattan and Long Island. The war between the 
English and Dutch Commonwealths in 1652, which 
sent Van Tromp's broom over the seas, brushing down 
the red spots of St. George, set the colonial sweepers 
at work. The big and little brooms were, however, 
put aside after two years ; but in 1663 they were all 
seized again, and by a single dash New York was 
swept into the English pan. 

Amid all this dust and refuse matter of war one 
can pick out now and then some stray grains "of shin- 
ing value. Such was Mary's and WiUiam's College, 
established in Virginia in 1693, making the second 
bright college speck in America. Such were the gold 
and silver ores of thought found by George Fox, 
Increase Mather, and others, mixed with brown earth 
or imbedded in quartz, but valuable in any collection. 
Such, too, the loving messages sent from Friends in 
England to their brethren here, which we can now 
pick from that colonial dust-heap where they shine 
like plates of mica. 

The Orange "William could not of course long bloom 
in peace in his new royal bed. His father-in-law. 



M 






THE COLONIES. 163 

James II., had fled across the channel to Louis XIV., 
and was selfishly entertained by him at Paris. Wil- 
liam objected — as some people do nowadays — to 
his relative's prolonged stay in that fascinating capital. 
This little impleasantness resulted in a war which 
lasted until 1697. Of course the Colonies were highly 
offended too; and as soon as the two rather elderly 
gentlemen at Versailles and St. James had taken snuff, 
there was a general sneeze from Passamaquoddy Bay 
to the Altamaha Eiver. Getting thus very red in the 
face, the colonists flung out their hands, which of 
course hit Canada right in the face. The French 
resented the slap, and pommelled away at New York, 
New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, scratching off 
many scalps at Dover, Schenectady, and along the 
Penobscot. A regular settler was aimed back by the 
Colonies at the very nob of the French settlements, 
Quebec. An arm-ament, directed by Sir William 
Phipps, was flung out towards the St. Lawrence, but a 
skilful fence by the' alert French warded off the blow. 
To heat the pokers in these fires, kindled in Europe, 
blown over to this side and fed here by wood fur- 
nished by the colonists, and often hauled from a great 
distance, was laborious and expensive. But this was 
a small care for England who coolly took out the irons 
when well aglow. 

Little, however, did she then imagine that the 
young arms thus smiting the irons on these French 
and Indian anvils were making and hardening muscle 
that would one day resist her own heavy and long- 
reaching blows. Slowly, slowly, but surely. Wheat 
left in Egyptian cases for quite other purposes, three 



«fe, 



164 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

thousand years ago, patiently sleeping, sprouts at the 
call of the sun in after centuries. The colonial seeds 
carelessly or selfishly cast by royal hands into furrows, 
seeming like very rugged and ugly blotches on the 
wide wintry-looking fields of North America, quick- 
ened in less than a hundred years by the rain-patters, 
were to wave in ridges as green and blossoming, as 
English hedges in June. 

None of our illuminated readers will fall down into 
that exalted, but still very common mistake, of sup- 
posing that the great mass of the men, women, and 
children, living here in the latter half of that seven- 
teenth century, were all the while, or indeed to any 
great extent, occupied by, interested in, or even meas- 
urably affected by, these large public events. The old 
man who thought it strange that all the millions of 
people in the Eoman Empire, who he naturally sup- 
posed, from his reading of history, were present at the 
killing of Csesar, did not rise against Brutus, Cassius, 
and the rest and prevent it, is now dead, but he has 
left successors to his historical notions. Most people 
are just as apt to think that everybody at Jerusalem 
knew King David as certainly as the Skibbareen 
Irishman that every American whom he meets in 
Ireland must be acquainted with his cousin whose 
going off from Skibbareen was so well understood 
there. Louis Napoleon, in his Life of Caesar, may 
magnify the importance and influence over his times 
of his self-reflecting hero ; but we all know that, in 
fact, as soon as the large imperial microscope is taken 
off from the single spot, Ca3sar goes back again into a 
speck on the broad Eoman sheet. To the ninety- 



THE COLONIES. 165 

nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine Eomans 
in one hundred thousand, it was practically of less 
consequence whether Caesar, Antony, or Julius Scipio 
Smith ruled Eome, than whether the season was~ wet 
or dry, or whether their wives and children kept well 
and healtliy. To the few around the court, to the 
mammas with eligible daughters just in the city of 
Eome, to a few vestimentary Jenkins who retailed to 
the dozen families of their set the latest scandals on 
the Palatine, it was a matter of some moment ; to the 
farmers, mechanics, working-people paving the wide 
empire with their labor and patient, endless industries, 
of comparatively little consequence whatever. - Doubt- 
less great numbers of these hard-working Eomans, in 
those unfortunate towns where there were no presses 
or telegraphs, lived forty, fifty, or sixty years after 
" great Caesar had turned to clay," without suspecting 
that he was not decorated china still at Eome ; with- 
out dreaming that, while they themselves had been 
raising pulse and sour wine for their own little house 
sovereigns in Gaul or Germania, Augustus had suc- 
ceeded to Caesar's power at the capitol, and had set 
those scribblers, Virgil, Livy, and Horace, to writing, 
and had made much history for Bohemians since. 
Little did they know that Tiberius had meanwhile 
succeeded Augustus and crucified more men at that 
Eoman New York than he had hairs on his hard 
pate, and so kept on the imperial pastime with a keen 
appetite, until he was served with the same sauce that 
he had dished out so freely ; nor had they ever heard 
tell that during the same interval, so uneventful for 
them in their far-off silent occupations, Caligula had 



166 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

crawled up to the place vacated by Tiberius, and from 
its slimy top had pitched victims to wild beasts and 
voracious fish, and amused the bloody pauses in his 
grim, mad humors by feeding his favorite horse with 
gilded oats, and would have made him consul had not 
the least inhuman brute died before his quadripedal 
instalment into the office which Cicero sought so 
long and praised so loudly. 

The great events, especially if at a distance, fill large 
spaces in our histories ; but, like a marriage or death 
in the family, they occupy but a comparatively brief 
part of the life of any of its members. There is a 
great deal of water, even in rivers that are famous for 
large fish, that holds no fish at all, — waters whose 
onflow gladdens and refreshes large districts. A 
nation or a community must at some time have 
marked events to stir its blood and create noble 
memories ; but it cannot live on Fourth of July or 
the remembrance of Waterloo. The life of the 
greater part of the colonists passed, as that of 
most people in all times and countries is spent, in 
quiet, steady work during the day, eating three meals 
if they had them, and two if they had not, and in 
sleeping as well nights as the hot or cold weather, 
wives or children, or other disturbers of the peace, 
would permit. We read of some red-letter event, like 
Kidd's piracies in 1696-1698, that tossed from the deck 
possibly twenty people ; and fancy that this Semmes 
must have borne an important part in those closing 
years of the century, without reflecting that almost 
every week in the year records more victims on our 
rivers and railroads, — victims despatched by us be- 



THE COLONIES. 167 

tween the mouthfuls of our toast at breakfast. Such 
events bear the same relation to the volume of life as 
the capital letters, which head the chapters of a book, 
to its solid contents. They are the daubs of paint on 
the card of gingerbread ; the small pinholes pricked 
in the large family loaf. We eat one thousand and 
ninety-four meals in the year without any recollec- 
tion of. them; we remember only the one Thanks- 
giving dinner which did us no more good than the 
others, and which probably, like Kidd's piracies, stuck 
in our crops very distressingly. No doubt many of 
the colonists never heard of Eobert Kidd ; and others, 
who had listened to Mary Jane singing the song' 
which told " how he sailed," fancied that, like Blue- 
beard, he was only invented for songs and red-covered 
primers. In fine, these notable events are, in general, 
but the froth-bubbles on the river's surface. The 
solid on-pressing mass does not feel the puffy little 
globes, iridescent though they be, and swells though 
they may appear to the few fish just around them. 
There was only one Kidd on the wide seas. Of the 
many other craft, carefully managed, sailing slowly 
and wearily, earning patient wages, and making port 
at the same time, we hear nothing. 

So the race drifts, scuds, tacks, works, or runs to- 
wards the great harbor. So was it in the seventeenth 
century. Old people, as now, took to tea, dozy arm- 
chairs, tedious gossip, and mumbling recollections of 
the golden days of youth, — golden even if actually 
passed amid steel points, arrow-heads, or among the 
rude ploughshares of ever-recurring, never-ending toil. 
Grief and gladness pendulated with regular swings 



168 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

and carried the hour-hands of family life evenly and 
surely on through the uneventful spaces, until at last 
the solemn bell struck. Then a new mound was 
sodded under the willow-trees in the rude churchyard, 
whose slate-stones notched the advance of the Colonies. 
Among the young people love crept in, too, under 
shaggy vests and calico bodices. Soft words passed 
into earnest vows, and clergymen or countrj^ squires 
welded the glowing pieces into instruments of un- 
complaining labor and life-long use. Then came new 
voices into the house, and, — well, at the winding-up 
of the century there were two hundred and thirty- 
five thousand people in the settlements. There would 
have been more, but — Chicago had not yet started. 

And now, tying our coltish Colonies to the bars of 
the eighteenth century, we leave them for a short 
time while we run down a few stray subjects, skit- 
tishly grazing in the back pastures. We shall soon 
return to drive them all into the ranker grass of the 
opening plantations. 



CHAPTEE IX. 

WITCHCRAFT. 

The Witch-Caldron at Salem. — How its Bubbling raised Teapot Lids 
and has kept open other Lids ever since. — The Young Female Witches 
at Salem condemned to the Ties of Matrimony; the Old Ones to 
harder Knots. — The Sin of being Old considered. — The Scarlet 
Letter. — Examples of Witchcraft cited. — The Delusion of Adam and 
Eve at the first Pomological Convention in Eden. — Woman as Man's 
Familiar Spirit; and her Conjuries. — Cases of David, Samson, and 
Herod. — Antony dissolved in that Egj-ptian Drink, Pearl Water. — 
The Maid of Orleans and what an Arc she subtended. — The Philters 
of Love, Ambition, Heroism, etc., administered to Men and Nations. — 
Their Effects. — Delusions, like Measles, catching. — The Frenzies of 
Fashion fully described. — The Stock Exchange. — Private Witch- 
crafts at Quiltings. Apple-Parings, etc. — Red Com and other Red 
Ears. — Sweet Witches. — A Jury of Gushing Girls. — Punishment of 
Men incapable of being bewitched. 

JUST as the last sands were dropping at once out of 
the hour-glasses of the seventeenth century and of 
a few old women at Salem, a strange trouble bubbled 
up in that little teapot of a place, which not onlj'- 
raised its lid at the time, but has kept a great many 
wide-open eyes fixed on it ever since, to see how it 
happened, and whether it would not, perhaps, do it 
again. Do it again ! of course not ; and very sorry 
that it ever did it at all. Let us distill from it first- 
proof historical stimulation, while we wait for the colts 
to cool off. 

Young women had often at Salem, as elsewhere. 



170 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

troubled men, and for the misdemeanor had been con- 
demned to the stocks — of marriage. But what to 
do with the ill-favored, old ladies Avho, in 1692, were 
accused of breaking the rest of both old and young, 
— of disturbing two organs, the spleen and gall, lying 
near that excitable old offender, the heart, and of 
stopping judicial digestion, — puzzled the brain of the 
wisest, yea, even the solid, well-set cerebrum of Cot- 
ton Mather. Much pondering was there, much ex- 
orcising, ihuch studying of the twenty-eighth chapter 
of 1 Samuel, and diligent rummaging of chronicles, 
Jewish, Egyptian, Trench, and English, to jfind de- 
scriptions of the vice, and the punishments therefor. 
The sin of being old is, in a new country where young 
activities are alone valuable, always great. At quaint, 
gable-ended Salem it became a swinging crime. 

How the knot was eventually not cut, but tied, 
all the world knows. Everybody remembers how 
those aged agitators were taken around the neck, not 
by future spouses, as the young Salemites were, but 
by cords most unsilken. The delusion of course soon 
vanished with the twenty victims ; but the Scarlet 
Letter, Avritten at the time, which tells the affecting 
story, is still handed around unsealed, and will ever 
be read with witching interest. 

'T is the old tale, with new characters and scenery to 
adapt it to the time and place. The Bible opens with 
it. In that earliest recorded pomological convention, 
attended by only three delegates, Adam, Eve, and Satan, 
the deception by one of them — a model trickster, 
whose plan has since been often followed in other con- 
ventions — of the female delegate, who then brought 



WITCHCRAFT. 



171 



m; 







172 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

over the third, led to a very wicked delusion, which has 
got a great many people in a very sad scrape. If woman 
was a witch in Paradise, what has she not been out ? 
She has been " man's familiar spirit " ever since, 
conjuring up visions before the eyes of young men, 
as stately as the sheeted form at Endor, or as pleasing 
as the walking figure of Bathsheba to the enamored 
eye of the Chief Singer. Samson could pidl down 
the pillars of Gaza, but could not muster strength 
enough to open his eyes to Delilah's illusions, or to 
raise his shorn head from her delightful pillow. Then 
there was that very fast woman, Herodias, who got 
a-head of John the Baptist on a charger. How she 
bewitched Herod by a pair of nimble heels ! — a feat 
by which so many dancers have whirled reason from 
her throne, and men from theirs. 

What a splendid necromancer was Cleopatra, dis- 
solving poor Antony, rich pearls, and the Eoman Em- 
pire in the drugged cup of her beauty. We see the 
Duumvir now in that Alexandrian palace, under her 
wildering magic. The air without twinkles with the 
clash of impatient Eoman shields, and the earnest 
gleamings of battle-axes, hungry to hew for him a way 
through living Komans up to the Capitoline hill ; but 
he, at the feet of the sorceress, swearing oaths falser 
than Abigail Williams's, in Salem court-house, tosses 
away from him the round globe of empire as carelessly 
as the ragged Egyptian harlequin in the next square 
flings up his cup and balls for the passing amusement 
of the idle crowd. 

Then, too, the Maid of Orleans, who subtends such 
a brilliant Arc in the annals of France ; — but why 



WITCHCRAFT. 173 

iterate history, which is but a biographical dictionary 
of characters who, by the impact of enthusiasms, 
genius, delusive heroism, or passion-working frenzies, 
have given to others, individuals, communities, armies, 
or nations, philters of delirious patriotism, love-potions, 
noble discontents under real or fancied wrongs, which 
have whirled them on to glory, to sudden graves, to 
state coronations, or have lifted them up to Calvaries 
of glorious self-sacrifices higher than themselves, and 
loftier than the ages which have grown upwards as 
they gazed ? 

Delusions, whether in Salem, Chicago, New York, or 
any other place afflicted witli common councils and 
their accompanying symptoms, municipal debts, are 
as catching as measles, and lead often to eruptions just 
as disagreeable. The semiannual frenzies which, year 
after year, seize whole communities, men, women, and 
chUdren, persons tall or short, fat or lean, blond or 
brunette, making them rush simultaneously and with 
hot celerity to throw away or alter their last six 
months' garments, bonnets, hats, or foot-clothings, be- 
cause Madame FoHe in Good-for-nothing Street, Paris, 
thinks it for her interest that they should, and to 
betake themselves aU to other garments, bonnets, hats, 
and foot-clothing of another cut and color, — cuts and 
colors uniform for aU ages, sizes, and complexions, — 
are quite as unaccountable to people at a distance, and 
even to themselves a year after, as the Salem delusion 
now, when we take it up in our long historic fingers, 
and measure it by the rule of good, cool, common 
sense. The panics of the stock exchange, starting out 
of a rumor in some obscure corner, and swelling into 



174 THE COxMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

tense statements and positive beliefs, which grasp even 
cool business brains and well-filled purses, and shake 
both empty on the winds, find their strange echoes 
back from the study of wise but momentarily deluded 
Cotton Mathers and the disordered judgment-seats of 
Salem magistrates. 

But the public and published examples of witch- 
craft are few compared with countless cases always 
going on in every community, urban or rural, unrecog- 
nized by any tribunals judicial or historic. At every 
apple-paring in New England, — in the husking-parties 
throughout the West, where the finding of the red ear 
of corn suddenly makes every kissful girl the personal 
owner of two redder ears, — in the quilting frolics at 
the South, where the young gentlemen of the place 
come in, after the sewing is done, and sow r'oses on 
cheeks white before, — by story-telling brooks that 
keep sacred the secrets of lovers, while babbling their 
own, — along the roadside, in quiet nooks, in village 
parlors, in crowded cities where mammon tries in vain 
to cheat the sweet witches out of their devotees, — 
everywhere, in fine, where hearts are not utterly 
trade-mailed, office-clad, or ossified, the tender deli- 
rium which early entered our great, glorious mad- 
house of a world, produces effects which are never 
understood by some, which confound the Mdse un- 
wisdom of old judicial heads, and sometimes get in- 
wrought into fine tragedies, before which even those 
of New England, although told by a good fellow or 
transfigured by a Longfellow, pale away faded and 
colorless. 

The man who is incapable of being bewitched by 



WITCHCRAFT. 175 

somebody or something, may make a good bargain, 
and live on unlovingiy a long time, — like an air- 
plant, never touching his mother earth, or feeling its 
inspiriting magics ; but he wiD. never get much out 
of life except meat, drink, and cold-sheeted sleeps, 
nor add much to the happiness or greatness of his 
kind. He who lives in the United States beyond a 
fair age, without getting inextricably tangled in the 
witching meshes of some good mate, should be tried' 
by a juiy of gushing girls, and condemned for life to 
the pillow-ry with some of the modern witches of 
New England or the sorceresses of the South. 

Whosoever, then, accuses the witchcrafts of other 
times and ages, let liim, ere he casts the first stone, 
look into his own heart, or around among his own 
household or community, and, borrowing a charity 
from his thoughts, say, if he can, " Go in — pieces." 



176 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




CHAPTER X. 

OF THE MANNERS, MORALS, HABITS, AND LAWS OF THE 
COLONISTS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 

First-class Telescope to see the Manners of a Past Age. — Difficulties 
of Near-sighted and Long-sighted People. — Near Objects more embar- 
rassing to the Observer than Distant. — Why? — The Ghosts of the 
Past. — The Manners and Dress of Stuyvesant, Eliot, Calvert, Rolfe, 
etc. described. — Manners of the Mass detailed ; in their Work, Play, 
Diet, Courtship, Fashions, Treatment of Young Ladies and Gentlemen, 
Children, Servants, etc. — Superior Advantages of Paterfamilias then 
in making Acquaintance with his Wife and Children. — Fast Girls 
and Calicoes. — The Isothermal Lines of Ethics. — Certain Vices, 
like Eggs, laid secretly and hatched afterwards. — The Fashions of 
Crime at various Epochs compared. — Jails and Jail-Birds. — The 
ingenious Crimes of Trade, Corporations, Schools, and Seminaries 
noted. — How Sects are frozen or thawed by Temperature. — Northern 
and Southern Sectarianisms. — Why Episcopacy flourished in Warm 
Latitudes. — The Early Commercial Morality of New York. — Baptists, 
Congregationalists,.and Independents. — The Habits of the Century; 
their Material, Color, Durability, and Wear. — The Laws mainly im- 
ported. — What a Business the Colonists carried on, notwithstanding, 
in the Domestic Article. — Kindness of the Proprietors in furnishing 
Ready-made Office-holders not appreciated. — American Itch for Law- 
making. — Laws against Criminals. — Their Crimson Color. — How 
the Rains of Mercy fell on hard Enactments, and the Thaw which 
followed. — Coroners' Inquests sat upon. — Verdicts under various 
Lights. — Justices of the Peace, and the Law they peddled. — Ad- 
ministrations of Law then and now contrasted. — How Colors, although 
imponderable, turned the Judicial Scales. 

FIRSTLY, Manners. — Historians, especially in 
modern times, are accustomed to entertain their 
readers Avith varied and variegated descriptions of the 
8* L 



178 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

manners of the people, period, or centnry under tlieir 
telescopes ; and as we have a first-rate historical Dol- 
lond, adjusted for day and night observations, and can 
bring down a past age so near as to enable our readers 
to see not only the cut of their great-great-great-grand- 
father's coats, the quality of their metal buttons on the 
outside, and of the metal wdthin their pockets, but can 
note and enjoy even the shape of their mouths, the 
character of the good things going in, and the better 
things coming out of them ; nay, can catch and fix 
the evanescent and subtle flavor of their humor and 
wit, as they exhale in rosy nimbi, we shall not with- 
hold some of the latest and most valuable discoveries 
we have been thus enabled to make. Some near- 
sighted people find a difficulty, as they look about 
upon their contemporaries, in arriving at results which 
they can crystallize around class nodules. They see 
only individual specimens, and wonder how the photo- 
graphic historian can bring out by his machine pictu- 
resque groups, clothed in appropriate costume, artisti- 
cally arranged. But this difficulty "arises from the 
unhappy fact that the objects observed lie directly 
under their eye. The others lie without. Besides 
such obtuse-eyed watchers of their own times, who 
experience an embarrassment in getting fitting words 
to express their ideas of an average man, age, habits, 
or morals, — a process much like that of producing our 
current Sherry wines by boiling down and simmering 
off a variety of ingredients, — lose sight of the precipi- 
tating, coagulating, forming mass, in their anxiety to 
note the frisky bubbles that come up to the agitated 
surface. Besides, long-sighted chroniclers gan see and 



THE MANNERS, ETC., OF THE COLONISTS. 179 

describe the habits and manners of the distant past 
with more clearness, and certainly with more telling 
effect, than the troublesome present, with its distress- 
ing individualities and exceptions, lying, amid the 
disturbing cross-lights of actual, hard, well-known 
facts. If, in bringing up the ghost of a period long 
buried, we get the wrong dress on it, or chance to 
summon back a spectre, invested with habits that 
fitted another epoch as well or better, we are not teased 
or contradicted by any foolish survivor, pushed by 
children-like questions, or worried into redness of face 
by puzzling inquiries or an awkward silence. 

And so reasoning, we feel sure that, if our inspec- 
tion of the accoutrements, manoeuvres, and drill of the 
companies that march before us in the seventeenth 
centiiry, is not absolutely accurate, the fault will not 
lie in the distance, nor in the atmosphere, nor yet in 
the instrument, but in one of these two causes, either 
that they have sent up the wrong squads or else that 
the originals had not, after all, much manners to be 
inspected. 

It is generally believed that Lord Chesterfield in- 
vented manners : but as he was not born until 1694, 
just as the seventeenth century was getting stagger- 
ingly infirm and indifferent to its externals, and as he 
did not procure the publication of his Letters until 
the characters on the blue slate-stones over the bones 
of the deceased age had become blurred and weather- 
dimmed, the question of the comparison of their 
manners with his patent methods and rules did not, 
we may well believe, much vex those earnest old toil- 
ers of the.sea and on the land. 



180 THE COMIC HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Single figures stand out in sharp and pleasing pic- 
turesqueness against the distant horizon of those Colo- 
nial days ; in Virginia, John Eolfe ; in New York, 
Petrus Stuyvesant; in Massachusetts, John Eliot; 
George Calvert, in Maryland ; Theophilus Eaton, in 
Connecticut; Sir John Yeomans, in North Carolina; 
Eoger Williams, in Khode Island ; and many others, 
who seem in their granite integrity to be poised, like 
calm sculpture, in ruff and wrist-frill, broad-lapelled 
coats, short-clothes, silk stockings, and real, unplated 
silver knee and sleeve buckles. — These figures, tall 
and stately, with high-bred, courtly manners, bland 
faces lit up by purposes and convictions, with large, 
generous waistcoats, made capacious for the pendula- 
tions of their big, loving hearts beneath, still arrest 
our admiring eyes. The great mass of the Colonists, 
however, were resolute workers, living on a spare diet, 
sleeping on hard beds, with shake-downs for their 
friendly, and shake-ups for their unfriendly, guests. 
Their tastes were simple and confined to a few objects. 
Those modern houses in which we dwell, more ap- 
propriately called museums, the best parts kept for 
show, and having not one, but several mermaids, a 
What-is-it, and an assortment of woolly animals with 
tails for heads, and heads omitted, would have 
paralyzed and shocked the most advanced Colonists. 
Their manners were taking, but they were mainly 
exhibited in taking grain from the fields, fish from 
the sea, and scant returns from their store sales. The 
graces were shown mainly by husbands in lifting their 
spouses on and off pillions, to and from church, and 
by young men in those sweetly rough compliments 



THE MANNERS, ETC, OF THE COLONISTS. 181 

that love contrives in all times, and among all classes, 
to shape out from a scanty, lingual stock in exchange 
for sheep's-eyes and assenting blushes. 

As it took vessels at that period several months to 
come from France, the settlers were somewhat late in 
their knowledge of the foreign modes ; but as the 
styles were the latest known, it was all the same in 
New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Boston. 
That rotatory machine which now turns out fashions 
semiannually, now clipping a yard or so from the top 
of a dress and adding it to the bottom, here expanding 
a bonnet to the size of a parasol, then contracting it 
to dimensions less than the milliner's bill for it; at 
one time running a flat iron down in front, and at 
another tacking a donkey's load on behind, had not yet 
been invented. Paterfamilias recognized his own 
children, day after day, and even year after year, in 
the same modes and garments ; the serviceable gray 
or serge, during week-days, and the decent, plain, 
unarresting, and unstunning habiliments, reverently 
donned for Sunday. The girls were not fast, although 
the colors of their calicoes were. Their bright carna- 
tions they wore all the time, only a little more so on 
Sunday evenings when the sparks lit them up, espe- 
cially if a match was near. 

In general a homespun candor quaintly marked 
family and neighborhood intercourse, and homespun 
honesty, integrity, and good sense, public and private 
actions. Of course all ages have common types of 
roguery. Each, too, has its own special representa- 
tives who commit crimes according to a prevailing 
mode, and who might easily be put into the fashion- 



182 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

plates of the Old Bailey or Sing-Sing. • In these re- 
spects the times whereof we speak kept company, to 
some extent, with their predecessors. But among the 
sparse settlements, the appropriators and spoilers of 
others' property and rights had such a hard time to do 
a thriving business, and found that honest work laid 
up so much more at the year's end, that after a little 
while they learned to prefer the ways of the virtuous, 
not from principle, but from interest, and left off 
courses that led to the poor-house, if they missed the 
jail. 

There Avere here and there dandies who imported 
their manners with their clothes ; but as the girls then 
had the good sense to believe that these, so far from 
being superior to those of domestic growth, did not wear 
so long or well, and had a way of changing so often 
as to be worth less than the duty imposed to bring 
them in, such foreign importations gradually fell off. 

Young ladies at home then sewed the tares, in- 
stead of the wicked old Sower. The " help " was only 
looked for, and always found in, the house ; which 
was kept up for the sake of the family, and not for 
the servants. People worked all the hours in which 
they did not sleep, and thus kept their minds from 
being agitated by the operation of " eight-hour laws," 
the tortures of party squeezes, and the bore of con- 
certs and lectures. Children were put to bed before 
midnight, were satisfied with their simple toys, and 
remained children nature's full term. Parents ruled, 
and not the baby, which crowed as much as it pleased, 
except over its begettors. 

It must be said, however, that elderly people even 



THE MANNERS, ETC., OF THE COLONISTS. 183. 

then bewailed the decay of the times, and often, over 
their pipes or knitting, conjured up visions of more 
virtuous days, when they were young, amid the green 
fields of old England, the emerald meadows of Hol- 
land, or on the hardy plains of Sweden. 

Secondly, Morals. — Ethics have no isothermal 
lines, fencing in tlie moral qualities, as nature gir- 
dles the earth with wavy zones for fruits, arctic, 
temperate, and tropical. And yet certain vices and 
virtues prevail, as trade-winds, more at one period, 
or over one tract at a given time than at or over 
another. It would almost seem as if certain moral 
or immoral ovarian eggs had been early and secretly 
laid in some wide districts, or among certain nations, 
where they were afterwards washed over by the im- 
pregnating milt of peculiar influences, and then broke 
into ready and abundant life. 

There were jails in all the Colonies, and very early. 
The variety of the jail-bird never wanted specimens. 
The crimes against the person were more frequent at 
first than those against property, for the obvious 
reason that there were more of the former than the 
latter; as property multiplied, however, it was, as 
usual, viciously coveted. 

The vices of an early age are more vigorous but 
rarer. Mean crimes ; ambidextrous, cunning contri- 
vances under tlie forms but against the spirit of law ; 
ingenious larcenies by railway companies, by chartered 
corporations, by trust companies, by commercial part- 
nerships, by seminaries and academies, where the 
pupils provide their own furniture, silver, and a great 



184 THE COMIC fflSTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

part of the instruction, and pay twice — ordinary and 
extraordinary — for everything they ought to get and 
do not ; sharp, unscrupulous trade, slicing down reali- 
ties so thin that they hardly serve to veneer our 
wants, and diluting truth so much that the millionth 
part of a grain will supply a whole store for twenty- 
four hours ; the brokerage of office ; the thousand de- 
ceits, infiltrated through the spongy textures of doubt- 
ful natures, and sprouting out, like rice, when the 
water of gain is poured upon it ; — these all are the 
luxuries of a higher civilization. They have nothing 
to feed on in a simple state of society. They drift in 
upon an older one like barnacles and foul creepers on 
the copper fastenings of noble, well-freighted ships. 
Like blood in super-refined sugar, subtle vices look so 
white in the mixture that we almost fail to see their 
crimsoning hues. We speak of the crimes and mis- 
demeanors of the Colonial times as indications of the 
prevailing morality, just as flies in open pans of cream 
tell its quality and richness. 

Morality, we have said, is not bounded by isother- 
mal lines ; and yet climate and soil do seriously affect 
the prevailing moral tones and hues, just as earthly 
lakes take on the passing colors of the heavens above. 

The Puritan sternness of New England convictions 

— as iron-like as the firs and larches on her own hills 

— swept in as gray gustiness across her early history 
as her northeasters over her wide fields. The latter 
pinched her children physically till they became of the 
same blue tint as their church regulations. The 
rigidity of even Huguenot faith could not stand the 
continual sun of South Carolina, which, at length, so 



THE MANNERS, ETC., OF THE COLONISTS. 185 

relaxed its sharp lines that they ceased to cut at all 
across that compressed globe of iniquity, human slav- 
ery. The moral qualities of Virginia were like its own 
soil, at first stiff and deep, but gradually deteriorating 
until they got down into such a narcotic, stony poverty, 
that the plough of vigorous truth seldom turned up. 

Forms of church worship, rites, and ceremonies usu- 
ally flourish best in warm latitudes, where the pas- 
sive swing on ecclesiastical ropes, suspended between 
time-crusted pillars, requires less exertion than climb- 
ing the tree, Zaccheus-like for one's self. The vines 
which, all along down the Avell-sunned slopes, from 
the Chesapeake Bay soutliwards, lean lovingly upon 
the magnolia and cottonwood, shaping themselves 
often into verdant gothic arches, grasped with no 
tighter fingers the supports which safely steadied their 
trusting confidence, than did their sunny-hearted cul- 
tivators curl securely the tendrils of their religious 
faith around the Episcopal oaks, whose acorns, dropped 
from rook-nested bouglis in England, and gathered and 
planted here, soon sprang up and spread their cool 
shades for an easy, luxurious faith. 

The dominant morality of New York early borrowed 
its ingredients, as its capital, from whomsoever would 
lend it anything. Although all these contributions 
came to it through the Narrows, they soon broadened, 
on being landed. Thither came the sturdy, broad- 
breeched, meadow-bottomed Dutch, bringing the well- 
pounded creed of Dort, hardened and tempered, like 
blistered steel, upon the anvil of war, througli tlie pre- 
ceding century. The mace of iron-glaived Alva had 
again and again struck it ; but the sturdy strokes had 



186 THE COMIC HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

sent more fire into than they had ever brought from 
it. There, too, came Protestants from the Ehine, who 
had gone through the flames of St. Bartholomew's day, 
and escaping first from France to Old Netherlands, 
and thence to New Netherlands, had carried with 
them, more ca.refully than their old delft, the sharp 
Articles of Calvinism. From Bohemia came the 
scholars of Huss ; from Piedmont, the hunted Wal- 
denses ; from France, the men who turned their faces 
to centripetal Eome as their Mecca, — their religious 
creeds mixing and mingling in the wide-armed Bay 
of New York, which ever welcomed all religions that 
built houses on its shores or belted its waist with com- 
mercial girdles. The Baptists were early washed over 
to our coasts, and finding ample rivers for their aquatic 
rite, spread with every new wave of emigration. Con- 
gregational and Independent churches grew like young 
bullocks in almost every New England valley, — even 
putting their stiff necks through the Connecticut 
natural Ox-Bow at Hadley, — the only yoke they ever 
would submit to. We speak of churches and sects as 
propagators of morality, and as the yardsticks which 
measured the colonial morals ; for as yet wicked men 
had not learned to use the church as covers, whence to 
spread nets for simpletons that lighted, like pigeons, on 
or near the adjacent grounds. In general, it may be 
said, that in spite of Puritan rites in New England show- 
ing the forbidding and cold side of the warm-hearted 
Gospel, in spite of the hedged Episcopal orchards of 
Virginia, where the blossoming odors were sought to 
be kept wholly inside the very high walls, in spite 
of the fermenting influences in New York, and the 



THE MANNERS, ETC., OF THE COLONISTS. 187 

discouragements from various local causes in the other 
Colonies, lihode Island and Maryland excepted, the 
colonists were healthily moral. 

The schoolmaster got early abroad ; and, gener- 
ally boarding around in the school district, and making 
himself miscellaneously useful, wedged some educat- 
ing notions into the heads of all, — in the younger by 
day, and in the older during the evenings. And thus 
the church, the school-house, industry, which pushed 
back idleness and its brood of vices, simple agricul- 
tural ways, the absence of city sores, and the rugged, 
conscientious pursuit of wholesome livelihoods in 
largely ventilated spaces, all concurred to hand up the 
Colonies along the unplanked roads of the age, to the 
outstretched hand of the eighteenth century. 

Thirdly, the Habits of the period were few and 
simple ; generally made of conscientious, native mate- 
rials, coarse but strong ; and were exceedingly well 
preserved. 

They were of a mixed color, but on the whole good. 

Fourthly, the Laws were at first and usually im- 
ported. Most of them were designed and upholstered 
in those second-class shops in London, the proprietors' 
manufactories, which were owned by certain royal 
joint-stock subscribers, whose object was to make as 
much money as possible out of their articles. With, 
this supreme object in view, their enactments were 
mainly framed to secure to themselves as much as 
could be of the proceeds of colonial labor, and leave 
the colonial purchasers to pay their own expenses and 



188 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

run the risks from the weather, poor crops, and Indian 
interruptions. To accomplish this, the proprietors 
sought to have the colonists devote as much of their 
time as possible to work. They endeavored to relieve 
them from the necessity of wasting precious moments 
in disposing of their products or in supplying them- 
selves with materials, or in gossiping in assemblies 
about foolish rights, or in squandering their days in 
electing officers, or gadding about the townships in 
electioneering for themselves or others. 

Did the Colonies want materials, wheat to sow the 
first year, crockery, furniture, store goods ? 

The companies could so easily send over a ship with 
them. 

Did the prosperous colonist wish to dispose of his 
surplus crop ? 

The companies would take it for him, and sell it in 
England. 

Was a governor, a judge, an office-holder of any 
kind, such as collector, portwarden, etc., needed ? 

Why, the companies kept them already made at 
their manufactory in London, and would express one 
through by their kst-sailing line in ample time, even 
if it took three months, and would deliver them 
wherever desired, at Plymouth, Hartford, Charleston, 
or Jamestown. 

The tjoloiiis'ts very early felt the inconvenience of 
this little arrangement ; and, being a sharp set, soon 
perceived the loss in thus buying and selling exclu- 
sively in a foreign market, stuff" which they could suit 
themselves better with at home, even if the articles 
did not have the companies' trade-mark or shine with 



THE MANNEBS, ETC., OF THE COLONISTS. 189 




190 .THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

their patented varnish. Gradually they tried their 
hands at law-making and officer-making, and, finding 
how easy it was, took a great liking to the business ; 
and at length, dropping the foreign-made articles one 
after another, came to carry on a considerable manu- 
facture of their own. The Yankee colonists were par- 
ticularly handy at making church regulations, and so 
multiplied them that we doubt whether any churches 
then existing had such a large and full collection. In 
fact, in some parts of New England, church-members 
had a difficulty often in knowing what to do, not hav- 
ing sufficient time to read the long codes, and yet con- 
scientiously fearing lest they might offend against 
some of their minute provisions prescribing or pro- 
scribing action. It may be remarked, in passing, that 
this caccethes faciendi leges is an itch highly Ameri- 
can, no ointment having yet been found strong enough 
to cure it. The colonists early insisted on acquiring 
their lands in fee, not liking any leases but releases. 
The old fable of Anteus was again vivified. The man 
who stands on the soil gets the strength of the earth ; 
and forthwith wrestles down his opponents, want or 
idleness, be they never so herculean. And so the 
simple land-owners of the Colonies, touching con- 
stantly their own acres, sucked up law-making power 
from their pores, and even imbilied a certain resisting 
faculty to cannons bored by any one but themselves. 

They had an aversion to roads not made with their 
own hands ; to laws of entail or inheritance, disposing 
of their lands which they had chopped out of the raw 
side of a continent ; and, in fine, became so resolutely 
resistant to all resolutions moved on the far Atlantic 



THE MANNERS, ETC., OF THE COLONISTS. 191 

side, unless seconded on this by themselves through 
their own representatives, that we are compelled by- 
authentic documents to believe, if the ten command- 
ments had been enacted by the royal law-makers 
without Colonial ratification, the sturdy settlers would 
have practically expunged all the " nots " from the 
suspected decalogue. 

In those early times nothing was more criminal than 
the laws against criminals. Like the medical practi- 
tioners, the legal doctors believed in blood-letting for all 
ailments. Misdemeanors, now disposed of at quarter 
sessions and by police magistrates with small fines or 
petty imprisonment, then dangled at the hideous cross- 
bars. 

The soft, April-like rains of clemency, now and 
then, however, began to fall upon these hard enact- 
ments. Quakers mildly doubted whether these scare- 
crows really frightened other offenders off the fields of 
crime. Silent tears, shed in secret household places 
over brothers and sons hung up on high hills for 
stealing or trespass, began to gather, like the waters 
of fountains hidden away in the depths of valleys, and 
to create that large American river, Public Sentiment, 

— larger than the Hudson, the Ohio, or the Mississippi, 

— which, rising and rising, has swept so many abuses 
and errors into the gulfs of time. 

That solemn Saxon joke, a coroner's inquest, as 
gloomy in its dissections, and as funny in its illogical 
conclusions, as in the land of the heptarchy, was not 
denied to those deodand colonists whose hearts sud- 
denly stopped beating, and whose mortal -s^TCcks, 
thrown up on that very weary shore " Crow'ners 



192 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Law" were always prizes for small bunglers. For 
live men, habeas cor2}us, that great opener of illegally- 
locked doors, began at the close of the century to be 
provided. 

If colonial judges sometimes wrote to England to 
know how to decide cases politically edged, for fear 
they might cut a royal prerogative or sharpen popular 
rights; or if justices of the peace — those small ped- 
lers of very common law, and uncommon specimens 
of judicial wares — dribbled out decisions for plain- 
tiff or defendant, not knowing which was which, the 
puzzled magistrate giving opinions about the off ox, 
without knowing which was the " off" or which the 
" near " ox ; or if sometimes in extreme cases the ob- 
fuscated and doubting arbiter of law consulted his 
wife and retailed her caudle lecture to the astonished 
suitor, as his well-considered judgment in the case, — 
in the main it may be aveiTed that justice was as 
well tolled from the mills, as in these latter days 
when the judicial miller takes from the bag before 
the grist goes in, and sees to it that his private gutter 
taps the hopper before it shakes itself into the cus- 
tomer's heap. Color is supposed to lurk just under the 
outer skin, and, if placed on the scales, to be impon- 
derable ; but it was always found that positive colors, 
when put on the judicial Fair banks, were very light ; 
the white, which is no color at all, invariably weigh- 
ing down that side of the balance, when a cinnamon- 
colored Indian or a black-berried African was found 
in the otlier. The black man always lost at the 
checker-board, even when the moves were claimed 
to be on the square. In fact, until a few years past. 



THE MANNERS, ETC., OF THE COLONISTS. 193 

when tlie military game called "drafts" began, luck 
never favored that color at the little game of law, 
at which two can play and one pay, or in fact at any 
of the larger games of life in America. The bleaching- 
powders that whiten even the ermine were slow in 
coming into use. The seventeenth century, like so 
many of its ancestors, while working its double team, 
one white and the other black, to draw its loads, took 
better care at baiting-places and at the taverns over 
nioht of the white horse than of the other. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE COLONIES IN THE LOWER HALF OF THE EIGHTEENTH 
CENTUEY. 

The Colonial Colts in the large, open Field pf the Eighteenth Century. — 
The Effects of a Sniff of French Gunpowder. — Queen Anne's War, 
1702-1713 ; its Cost and Results in Europe and America. — Acadia 
changes ite Name to Nova Scotia. — How the Colonies started a News- 
paper in 1704. — Philadelphia in a Sheet in 1719; and how comfortable 
it was. — The Franklin Bros, funiish Food too condensed even for 
Boston. — Benjamin quits the Hub ; foots it, without tiring, to New 
York. — How he got through New Jersey without paying Toll. — Enters 
Philadelphia with Two Loaves, and sets up an Intellectual Bakery. — 
Banks built on the Sands of Credit. — Moving Accidents. — John Law's 
Scheme to use the Mississippi Valley; how it gi-ew ; what it promised, 
and how it performed. — A French Pasquinade. — The Results of a 
Bank Panic in the Eighteenth Century. — The Effects on the Manufac- 
ture of Children. — Number of Colonists in 1713 and 1743. — The Con- 
dition of Delaware, New Hampshire, and Vermont. — The Training of 
Young America. — Yale College and its Mustard-like Growth. — The 
American Learned Oak. — The Connection between Slate-Pencil and 
Gum Chewing and Female Education. — What took Place between 
1713 and 1743. — A Negro Plot in New York. — Negi-oes thrown over- 
board, and the Bubbles that rose. — How large Historic Doors swing 
on small Hinges. — Examples from A to W. — What happened because 
Maria Theresa was a Female. — The English Georges; what Bulls they 
were, and made. —The Transatlantic Bullocks; how they rushed 
into King George's War in 1744, and what Mischief they did for Four 
Years. 

THE colonial colts which we left tied up to the 
bars of the eighteenth century could not, with 
their American blood, stand' there for any length of 
time without chafing to be let into " fresh fields and 



COLONIES, LOWER HALF OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 195 

pastures new." The bars down, off they scampered, 
dashing up their heels and tossing their heads in the 
fresh air. 

Scarcely, however, had they gone a stone's throw in 
the great unfenced field, before they snuffed a sulphu- 
rous smell from the adjacent lot, the French settle- 
.ments of Acadia. Queen Anne, the second daughter 
of James 11., who, in 1702 had succeeded her sister 
Mary, which aforesaid Mary, with her husband, the 
Orange William, had, as we have already seen, found 
England too small for them and the aforementioned 
James, also took a fancy that France was being made 
too comfortable for her migratory parent, and, in order 
to keep him travelling, bombarded that country. This 
little experiment, called in the large-bore histories. 
Queen Anne's War, lasted eleven years, and cost Eng- 
land about one sixteenth of her entire value. She 
obtained, however, as compensation for this outlay, 
these results in Euroj)e : several fresh monuments in 
Westminster Abbey, a staggering back-load of debt, a 
crowd of one-sleeved men, many young women in be- 
coming widow's caps, Marlborough and wife with sala- 
ries amounting yearly to three hundred and twenty- 
six thousand dollars besides the snug little box at 
Blenheim Palace, the glorious though empty victories 
of Eamillies, Malplaquet, Oudenarde, and Blenheiin, 
and that very big elephant, the rock of Gibraltar. 

Of course our colts became intensely excited by 
the gunpowdery air, tore away into the northern 
French lot, and fell to kicking most lustily. The 
French fillies there naturally bit back and let fly their 
gallic-shod heels freely ; Ijut the New England ponies 



196 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

SO worried and wounded them in tlie flanks and hips 
as to drive them clean out of the iield. Port Eoyal 
was reduced and became Ann-apolis ; and Acadia, 
battered by colonial guns to a wreck, and turning up 
in her distress under the name of Nova Scotia, grasped 
one of tliose long humane lines which the Marine 
Society, or government located at London, threw out at 
that time continually for distressed communities. To 
this sea line the blue-nosed, fish-shaped peninsula has 
since held with the bite of a. codfish, trolled and 
played by the Izaak Walton of nations, until the fish 
shows signs of letting go the hook. 

Amid the Alpine glaciers of war, however, there 
bloomed, as travellers find high up among the ice- 
fields, the graceful and tender flowers of gentler life. 

The Colonies started the centu:^ with a newspaper. 
The Boston " News-Letter," print^* on a foolscap sheet, 
and isued once a week, in 1704, only twenty-eight 
years after the first newspaper was started, and in the 
very year the first editor, Eoger I'Estrange, died, was 
the parent of that large family of children of stll sizes 
and with such varied characters, which . are now dis- 
seminated through almost every" .village of the land, 
and has acquired such a wide influence, interest, and 
large real estates among us. Meet it was that this 
prolific stock should have originated on the spot where, 
as is now pretty well proved, the first white men who 
visited our continent made their first landing within 
our borders, seven hundred years before. It must not, 
however, be supposed, that the pioneers in newspapers 
were Danes. From all that can now be ascertained, 
they were Bohemians. We may add that the " News- 



COLONIES, LOWER HALF OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 197 

Letter " was never merged in the New York " Herald." 
As it never issued but a single edition on any one 
daj, and had no contemporaries at first to cull from, 
it did not become the New York "Express." It is 
also a common mistake to suppose that it was after- 
wards expanded into the "North American Eeview," 
or became by cultivation that large, flowering double 
monthly rose, " The Atlantic." The "News-Letter" of- 
fered no premiums to multiply subscribers or to divide 
the claims of competitors ; for it had no rival for fifteen 
years. Then Philadelphia, always emulous, got up a sec- 
ond sheet, a warm, gray worsted one, which wrapped 
up comfortably her growing youth, and displayed 
most acceptably her comely proportions. Two years 
later, in 1721, James Franklin established at Boston 
"The New England Courant," the fourth American 
newspaper, full of audacious thinking and indepen- 
dent notions, some of which were furnished by his 
brother Benjamin, then a stripling of fifteen years. 
The criticisms were too strong, even for Boston ; and 
after trying in vain for two years to nurse the place 
up to the wholesome diet, Benjamin left it. After a 
perilous journey to New York, whence he footed it 
across New Jersey without being policed or tolled, 
— for the Camden and Amboy Eailroad had not yet 
subjected that Province to its sway, — he entered 
Philadelphia with two loaves of bread for himself. 
He soon set up a good intellectual oven of his own, 
and distributed, not Boston brown bread, but well- 
baked, healthy, family loaves, made of the best white 
flour to be had, to the world and — Philadelphia. 
In 1740 there were eleven newspapers in America, 



198 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

one in each of the Colonies of New York, Virginia, 
and South Carolina, three in Pennsylvania, and five 
in Boston, which thus early began to gather Massa- 
chusetts to a head. 

But these were not the only papers issued. The 
Bank of England had been established in 1694 ; and 
eighteen years later, paper credits were issued by 
South Carolina to the amount of £48,000. Massa- 
chusetts with her presses could of course print more 
promises, and in 1714 she beat South Carolina by 
£ 2,000. Other Colonies followed, even Ehode Island, 
distrusting Providence, built a paper-house on the 
sands of credit. The floods soon came upon all these 
unstable edifices, and there were many " moving acci- 
dents by flood" to the washed banks. The slight 
silver foundations were undermined, and the banking- 
houses fell, and " great was the fall thereof." Twenty- 
five years after the first bank was established, few of 
the credits were worth over twenty cents on the prom- 
ised dollar. Those of North Carolina descended to 
seven, — almost as low as Confederate paper in 1865. 

But the scheme most American in size and prom- 
ises was started in France by a Scotchman in 1716- 
He proposed to the French Eegent and established 
upon the boundless trust in the untold, because not 
unfolded, mining wealth of the valley of the Mississippi, 
a company, spawning 200,000 shares of stock, aggre- 
gating at the par value one thousand millions of livres, 
which, on the iron strength of human faith, six mil- 
lions only of silver in its own vaults, and the hand- 
some certificates that hinted at more figures than 
ordinary arithmetic can compute, agreed to pay the 



COLONIES, LOWER HALF OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 199 

vast public debt of France, swollen under Louis XIV, 
higher than a ISIississippi freshet, and to distribute 
forty per cent annually to the stockholders. Omne 
ignotum j^f^o magnijico. It seemed as if the steel 
armor of De Soto, buried in tlie oozy bottom of the 
Mississippi Eiver, touched by John Law's paper wand, 
had dissolved, and by a wonderful alchemy had been 
turned into liquid gold, whose exuberant floods were 
to make of France an auriferous Delta. The prophets 
of a rise were many, the real profits very few ; and in 
four years the principal had gone where De Soto's 
armor was rusting. The golden Armada of France 
was snagged, and disj)ersed beyond the reach of diver 
or bell. The speed with which shares, swollen from 
one thousand to ten thousand, were suddenly pricked 
and vanished, and the rapid changes in the fortunes 
of their holders, are well expressed by a French pas- 
quinade of the period : — 

" Lundi, j'achetais des actions; 
Mardi, je gagnai des millions; 
Mercredi, j'ornai mon menage; 
Jeudi, je pris un equipage; 
Vendredi, je m'en fis an bal; 
Et Samedi, a Fhopital." * 

Moral. — Paper Laws are not as trustworthy as, 
although more sliiny than, specie. 

* Which may be tunied out of its native bed into an inferior English 
OHe thus; — 

Monday, some shares I obtained; 

Tuesday, thereby millions I gained; 

Wednesday, my establishment grew; 

Tlnu'sday, to an equipage I flew: 

Friday, at the ball I long tarried ; 

And Saturday to the poor-house was carried. 



200 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The experiments of the colonists thus early in en- 
graved promises showed how adventurous and hopeful 
they had become. The unfavorable results did not 
indent their faith. There was always a side-pocket 
for American losses. In this they clapped their broken 
bank-bills, and John Law's handsome certificates with 
the wonderful figures that had " cut so many shines," 
and went on. The building of a few rice-machines, 
sugar-mills, or school-houses were checked for a few 
months ; the clearing of some lots was less rapid ; the 
purchase of a new gown for Prudence, or a new waist- 
coat for John Smith's great-great-grandson, postponed ; 
but the subscriptions to the Boston "News-Letter" 
did not fall off, nor the Franklin loaf diminish in 
weight. 

There was one important branch of American in- 
dustry and wealth which actually increased most dur- 
ing the severest periods of financial losses, the manu- 
facturing of children. At the close of Queen Aime's 
war, in 1713, the Colonies had a popiilation of four 
himdred thousand, — an increase of one hundred and 
sixty-five thousand since the bars were let down. This 
population doubled during the next thirty years. 

So many new boys coming forward required of 
course more training. A long-sighted governor of the 
East Indies, Elihu Yale by name, reached a hand 
across the seas, and placed some books and a little 
money at the feet of a few wise-hearted men in Con- 
necticut, w^ho took them up, and planted them for a 
few years at Saybrook. The gits thriving well, they 
were transplanted to New Haven. Everybody knows . 
how these mustard shoots have grown ; how their 



COLOMES, LUWEK HALF OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 201 




The Schoolmaster abkoad. 



9* 



202 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

sturdy arms ever keep toucliing the westering borders, 
dropping schoolmistresses on Southern soils, ministers 
on Western prairies, spicy editors for city sandwiches ; 
even their dead branches enriching the deep soils of 
scientific and theologic thought. 

The planting of schools increased. It was always 
a favorite branch of American husbandry. The school- 
house was frequently the first seedling put in. Now 
more carefully fenced about, it became the quercus 
gigantcus Amcricanus, — to our plantations what the 
British oak is on an English estate, the glorious spike 
that rivets it to the wave-rocked island. Birch-trees 
could hardly supply the colonial demand upon them. 
School-girls opened the slate-quarries for chewing- 
pencils, and stripped the spruce-trees for gum. I^ow- 
est thou not, reader, what a close connection there 
is between pencil and gum chewing and female educa- 
tion ? If not, thou hast not been blessed with sisters 
between the liquid ages of fourteen and seventeen, and 
must hasten to study female geology, which embeds 
between its slaty folds the beautiful ferns and flora of 
knowledge. Thou must betake thyself to the nearest 
seminary, and observe the sudden and deep openings 
down through slate-lined shafts into the mines of 
earthly learning. 

The treaty of Utrecht in 1713 closed and sealed 
Queen Anne's war. There was a repose through the 
Colonies for thirty-one years. During this period the 
Colonies stretched themselves, took in new ideas, and 
let out the strait bandages which still swathed them. 
Delaware, dandled on the knee of Pennsylvania until 
1708, having cut her first teeth, was set down to crow 



COLONIES, LOWER HALF OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 203 

like a young cock among the blue lien's cliickens. Ver- 
mont, as we have before seen, undergoing pretty 
nigged nursing through her vigorous babyhood, was at 
last plumped upon the floor by New York, in 1724, 
with a smart cuff on the ears, and the ungracious and 
thankless advice, " Now go, if you must, and take care 
of yourself." The youngster, who had found out for 
some time that she could not only run alone, but could 
even climb up to her own Saddle-Back, immediately 
started off, and was soon seen setting up education 
factories, saw-mills, meetmg-houses, and nut-shellers, 
and running a variety of very transporting businesses 
between Lake Champlain and the Connecticut Eiver. 
It was a long time before she got her lines with New 
York out of tangle and settled; but as Vermonters 
never felt any practical difficulty in crossing lines 
whenever they saw pleasanter ones in better places, 
this uncertainty as to the exact limits of her colonial 
cords rather facilitated than impeded her circulation 
and growth. New Hampshire — w^ell out at length 
from the leading-strings of Massachusetts, in 1741 — 
toddled slowly up into hardy strength. From her 
whitened hills she was obliged to keep a sharp look- 
out northwards upon the saucy French and tricky 
Indians, and, in spite of all her sentries and vigilant 
scouts, suffered more than her share from them both. 
The Indians took off many of her scalps ; but, notwith- 
standing all their sharp knives, she kept her Profile 
saifie and unscarred, and was even Keene enough to 
outlive the neighboring tomahawks and the more 
distant and swooping night-hawks from the St. Law- 
rence. 



204 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

New York was stunted in her growth for a short 
time, in 1741, by the report of a negro plot. It turned 
oVit, liowever, to be " a great cry and little wool." 
Yet on tlie bare suspicion of a design to burn the city, 
more than thirty slaves were judicially massacred. 
The golden waves of commerce, however, soon closed 
over the momentary plunge of the sable coffins, and 
the delusion, like that at Salem half a century before, 
rippled away from the spot in widening circles until 
it broke upon the liistoric shore. Some events, insig- 
nificant at the time, grow larger as they approach the 
higher land of civilization ; others, magnified by local 
passion, soon sink forever out of sight. The former 
are buoyed up by the life-floats of principle ; the lat- 
ter, unworthy of salvage, break and vanish. 

Tlius the contests of the colonists with the proprie- 
tors, slowly marking the advancing tide of civil free- 
dom, are hardened on the shore line of our past his- 
tory. Although they themselves were too busy in 
making to study the results when accomplished, their 
descendants, from more cultivated heights, ponder 
carefully the wave -tracks, as geologists mark and 
measure the traces of ancient sea-marks in coal-beds, 
overlaid to-day with the weighty accumulations of 
ages. On the other hand, the petty struggles in Vir- 
ginia, Massachusetts, and South Carolina to establish 
ecclesiastical supremacy, and in other Colonies to set 
up sumptuary laws prescribing the number, cost, or 
cut of garments, although at the time tossing up 
great masses of foam, like foam speedily dissolved 
into nothingness. 

Great doors swing on small hinges. The Colonies, 



COLONIES, LOWER HALF OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 205 

towards tlie close of the first haK of the century, were 
destined to add anotlier example to tl-ie many notable 
proofs which the liistory of nations before them had 
furnislied of tliis fact liistorically observed. Tlie Mace- 
donian Empire burst over tlie little excess of wine 
poured one day into Alexander's cup. The chance 
meeting of Henry VIII. with Anna Boleyn altered 
the dynastic current and the religious faith of Eng- 
land, changed the European Atlas, and affected for- 
ever the settlement, civilization, and characters of the 
American Colonies. The acid temper of Tetzel pre- 
cipitated into Luther's cup, raised the Eeformation 
into sudden effervescence. The evenly grooved dis- 
position of William the Silent was a pivotal point 
around which the liberties of the Dutch Eepublic 
safely turned. An accident might have easily changed 
the character or shifted that individual centre, and 
sent the unbalanced periphery of the state into disas- 
trous confusion or ruin. And so the accidental birth 
of a daughter, instead of a son, to Charles VI. of 
Austria, was an unfortunate windfall, which in 1744 
raised a tempest of war that enveloped all Europe, and 
sw^ept with fury over their Transatlantic Colonies. 
The entire Continent was marshalled into two hostile 
camps for eiglit years ; England, France, Austria, Prus- 
sia, Spain, Holland, and nearly all the minor states, 
let out their best blood, — the heart's, — or crij^pled 
the best limbs of their young and middle-aged men, 
spent all tlieir available cash, and mortgaged the fu- 
ture ; summer fields of grain were trampled out and re- 
manured by the bone-dust of poor soldiers ; Eontenoy, 
Bergen-op-Zoom, and other places were made, by their 



206 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

horrors, resorts ever since of idle tourists ; and all 
Euroj)e, in fact, begirt with war-fires which burnt up 
the accumulated wealth of generations, — and all be- 
cause of that little windfall on the lot of Charles VI. 
Of all the multitudes maimed, butchered, or consigned 
to costly pension lists, only two individuals had the 
slightest interest in the wild carnival, — Maria Theresa, 
the windfall, the Pomona apple of discord, and one 
Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria. France and Eng- 
land were of course on opposite sides, and the Co- 
lonial clocks marked Greenwich or Paris time as the 
master hands set tliem. The great iron pendulums 
on each side the sea swung together. The hour-hands 
constantly set off bells that tolled to funerals. The 
Colonies followed the hearses in mourning purchased 
by themselves. Genuine Americans already, tliey dis- 
dained to mention the expense, or to complain that it 
was beyond their means. In spite of funerals, how- 
ever, and though the beUs toU never so sadly, boys 
will grow. 

The first George had come to the English throne in 
1714. The second, third, and fourth of the same 
name successively covered it with their persons until 
1830, — a century of English Georgics, fuU enough of 
bucolic stupidity and ox-like lolling down in rich 
clover, so far as the sovereigns were concerned, but 
bristling with short-horned and long-horned wars that 
pushed and gored in all directions. The second George, 
imported, like his sire, from Hanover, had been rolling 
in the rich English pastures for thirteen years, when 
the war of which we are now speaking commenced 
impaling so many victims, — a war which passes in 



COLONIES, LOWER HALF OF EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 207 

our American chronicles under tlie name of " I^ng 
George's war/' but in European history is known as 
" the war of the Austrian succession." As might be 
expected, after the old stiff-necked leader of the Eng- 
lish herd commenced pushing the continental cows, 
the American young bulls — possessing aU the red fire 
and knotted thews of the home stock — sprung over 
into the French lot, and after goring and receiving 
thrusts from the Gallic steers, at length, in 1745, made 
a dash at Louisburg in the island of Cape Breton, and 
ripped it out of the side of French America, leaving a 
sore gash that festered for six years. 

It will be our duty hereafter to note the results of 
these wounds in mortifying French pride, and ulti- 
mately destroying the carefully nursed French colonial 
stock in North America. 



CHAPTEE XII. 

THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 

1754 TO 1763. 

No Hopes for the Millennium in American Colonies up to 1754. — More 
Swords tliaia Ploughshares. — Mars in America. — Sixteen Indian 
Wars in 147 Years. — How they were fed by French Oil and blown 
by French Bellows. — The Five Great Continental Wars, and how 
they reached over and handled the Colonies. — The Treaty Patches, 
and how they failed to cover the War Breaches. — The V^olcanic Char- 
acter of American Soil. — How the Animosities of France and Eng- 
land grew through Four Centuries, and in what a Hateful Harvest they 
waved, in 1754, each Side the Sea. — Celebrated Fights between the 
Rivals in Europe. — How Commercial Competition rubbed in Salt 
Water, and Religious Differences Brimstone, into the Wounds. — 
Memorable Cases of Battle Surgery. — The Relative Merits of English 
and French Claims to America fully stated. — Deeds of Land and of 
Ai-ms clash. — French Jesuits with Crosses and Traders with Skins 
encompass the English Plantations from Maine to Minnesota, and 
thence to Alabama and Texas. — Marquette, Joliet, La Salle, Lalle- 
mand, and others. — The Former escaped the Fast Life of Chicago, and 
La Salle the Hazards of Natchez. — France seeks to fasten a Remark- 
able Rosaiy around the Neck of Young America ; England to cut it. 

— Suitors to the same Maiden, they suited not her nor each other. — 
Their soft Ways to her. — Their Hardness to each other. — Their Long 
Quan-els over her Pei'son and Purse result at last iri a Decisive Fight. 

— The Championship for the American Belt. — The Champions, the 
Belt, and the Ring described. — How .John Bull and Jean Crapeau 
stepped into the Latter. — The Nine Rounds from 1754 to 1763. — 
How Mr. Bull won ; what he said, and how ]\Ionsieur Crapeau be- 
haved. — A Suitor pleased, and a Suitor non-suited. 

THE American colonists up to 1754 could not well 
entertain, from their own experience, any well- 
founded hopes of the speedy advent of the millennium, 



THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 209 

when meek-eyed' Peace is to hold the good reapers 
— McCormicks or others — beaten out from ugly- 
swords, and when war is to be banished somewhere, 
probably to that red-faced Mars, whose vulgar man- 
ners, bricky hair, and swaggering gait have not un- 
frequently brought him into disgrace with his neigh- 
bors, particularly with the touchy Venus, and some- 
times put him into an eclipse with that steady-go- 
ing old tramper, the Earth. But somehow, in spite 
of his disreputable antecedents. Mars had contrived to 
acquire a very strong influence over that part of our 
planet occupied by the thirteen Colonies, from the time 
of the very first settlement at Jamestown, in 1607, 
throughout all the century and a half which followed. 
Over that tract of time, their march along the highway 
of life was like an Irish landlord's visit to his own es- 
tate, — armed, grim, and hostilely interrogative of all 
who approached. Like his, their advance, too, was 

" Per ignes 
Suppositos cineri doloso." 

During the one hundred and forty-seven years of 
which we speak, sixteen distinct wars with various 
Indian tribes or confederacies, averaging one every 
nine years, had been carried on at various points, from 
the extreme northeast to the farthest southern border. 
In these wars, formal expeditions were organized, 
bodies of troops, large for the populations, raised, 
equipped, and sent out amid the sighs of young ladies 
and the fears of their mothers, punishing old mas- 
sacres, and wasting, like prairie fires, whole districts, 
and of course kindling other Indian resentments that 
swept back over the settlements. 

N 



210 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Over nearly all of these combustilole war piles it 
was found that French oil was poured to make the 
fire take readily, and French bellows were at work to 
blow the savage flames into a disastrous conflagration. 
Between these more formidable expeditions were inter- 
jected petty skirmishes, midnight attacks, sorties, and 
reprisals, as numerous and as little regarded by the 
colonists in general as railroad killings or corpora- 
tion massacres with us. Guns and swords were as 
common in farmers' houses, as spades and hoes to-day. 
Arrows to the right, left, and in front of them, pointed 
many colonial morals, and adorned many a sad tale of 
border life. Bloody Brooks were christened with red 
water in three different settlements ; and poor, indeed, 
are the annals of that town — whose records reach back 
beyond the half-way mile-stone of the eighteenth cen- 
tury — that cannot show the garnishments of the bow 
and arrow. Few, indeed, were the families of New 
England that could keep the Passover, commemora- 
tive of exemptions from the terrible visitations of the 
Indian smiter. 

Besides these chronic and almost ceaseless domestic 
troubles, the great continental Avars — those of 1651 
and 1664 between England and Holland, in 1656 
between England and Spain, King William's war 
from 1688 to 1697, Queen Anne's from 1702 to 1713, 
and that free European fight for the Austrian succes- 
sion which closed the half-century, covering in all 
twenty-nine years on this side the sea — drew be- 
tween tlieir mailed hands the tender Colonies, wrenched 
their young and growing interests from tliem, and 
hurled their protectors sometimes against the French 



THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 211 

of Acadia and New France, sometimes against the 
ever-hostile Indian tribes. The patched-up peaces 
which followed these great wars, and which covered 
the European breaches, left the colonial combatants 
battered and bruised, ragged in clothes, in debt for 
expenses, and in mourning for the lost, with French- 
men and Indians irritated by the conflict, and goaded 
into hot revenges, which even the snows of New 
France could not cool. 

In a word, the entire belt of land northwards and 
westward of the plantations was highly volcanic, some 
peak almost continually in eruption, while always 
throughout its whole extent mutterings under the 
cindered heat threatened wide-shaking action and 
crimsoned tidal waves. 

The animosity between the French and English 
races in Europe, in 1754, ahnost surpasses our be- 
lief. For four centuries, from the days of Edward I. 
and the black-mailed Prince, who, with their armies, 
overran France, almost as numerously, and ^Tought as 
violently on her pride and taste as the irruptions of 
green-backed Americans to-day, French and English 
armies in the field, navies on the sea, wit, caricature, 
heavy-folioed bombs, light artiUery, pasquinades, and 
exploding mines of sarcasm and raillery, not only 
mounded new graves on either side the Channel, and 
gashed ever-reminding physical wounds, but fretted 
and frayed Saxon self-complacency and Gallic egotism. 
Cressy, in 1346 ; Agincourt, in 1415 ; the battle of 
the Spurs, in 1513 ; the war in aid of the Huguenots, 
in 1627 ; Blenheim and Malplaquet, in 1706 and 
1709, — planted bitter memories that waved continually 



212 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

in vigorous harvests of rancorous hatred. Jealous 
rivals stood by to remind each of her supposed dis- 
graces, and thus to profit by new quarrels. Commer- 
cial competition rubbed salt water into the raw places. 
Differences of religious faith chafed them with brim- 
stone. Squibs, tossed backwards and forwards, lit on 
inflamed parts, and raised national sores. Spanish- 
fly several times drew angry blisters, and proud flesh 
often set in around the edges. Plasters were of course 
put on by diplomatic surgeons ; but the trouble was 
deeper than their patches could reach. The knife and 
steel scissors were then brought in again, and the 
national vivisections began anew. These surgical 
operations were almost constantly going on, and their 
description in Hume, Robertson, and other historians, 
might be appropriately called Memoirs of Celebrated 
Cases in Surgery. 

It must be remembered that, at the period to which 
we are drawing the reader's attention, railroads and 
swift steamers had not yet ironed out the stiff mastiff- 
like ruflies around the necks of these high-spirited, 
full-blooded nations. International expositions had 
not spread their cloths over the Field of Gold, on 
which rapiers should only be used to cut EngHsh 
roast beef and French pudding, and helmets be turned 
up into drinking-cups, to quaff, in cool Bordeaux, 
toasts to the entente cordial of solid peace. On the 
contrary, at the middle of the eighteenth century the 
mutual hatred of the two nations saturated everything. 
National drinks, popular on one side of the twenty- 
mile strait which parted the imbibers, were poisons on 
the other. Clothes, worn by one race, were not only 



THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 213 

shunned, but caricatured with pen and pencil by the 
other. The paintings, the plastic arts, the literature, 
and legislation of the period have preserved in endur- 
ing forms the widely felt antipathy. Their mutual 
rancor dissolved the obligations of courtesy, drij^ped 
through diplomatic despatches, and left the green 
mould of jealousy on all the relations of the two gov- 
ernments, and even the business transactions of their 
people. 

This envenomed home feeling had early crossed the 
Atlantic, and lost none of its acridity on the passage. 
In point of time the English were before the French 
in their American discoveries, but in settlement the 
French preceded the English. AVhile the Cabots, 
the first Englishmen who ran down our country, touch- 
ing in 1498 at Newfoundland, and thence coasting 
along our shores as far as Florida, without leaving 
any colonists behind them, anticipated Verizzanni, the 
first French discoverer in America, by twenty-five 
years, the French under Cartier in 1534, Eoberval 
in 1542, and Eibault in 1562, landed and made 
fugitive settlements at various points, from the Hu- 
guenot plantation in South Carolina northwards around 
the present Provinces of Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, 
and New Brunswick, and up the St. Lawrence as 
far westward as Montreal. Over this entire broad 
strip they had affixed the label " New France." The 
English made no further discoveries of, nor any settle- 
ments in, America, after Cabot's expedition, rmtil 1583, 
when Sir Humphrey Gilbert, freighted with a charter 
from Queen Elizabeth, sailed for Virginia with a com- 
pany of settlers. This was rapidly followed up, with 



214 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

little permanent result, however, by Ealeigh, Gran- 
ville, and Gosnold. The French settlement of Port 
Eoyal, on the Bay of Fundy, antedated that of the 
English at Jamestown five years. 

England and France now vied with each other in 
granting large deeds of American territory, most of 
which conflicted with each other, as their martial 
deeds had done at home. The English Henry VII. 
granted to Mr. John Cabot all the lands which lie 
might discover, reserving to his royal self a small 
commission of twenty per cent. Five years later the 
French Henry IV., without employing any lawyer to 
search the title, gave to De Monts so much of the 
same North American lot as now embraces Pennsyl- 
vania, New Jersey, New York, the New England 
States, and the confederated Dominion of Canada. 
Other unwarrantable warranty deeds were subse- 
quently made and done by the rival grantors, involv- 
ing the titles in distressing doubt and confusion. 
Military actions of ejectment followed. As early as 
1629, Champlain and his French colony were driven 
from Quebec, like squatters on the property of another, 
and the French would then haye been all ejected from 
New France but for an unwise and ignorant settle- 
ment between the two large European landlords, 
called the Treaty of 1630. Subsequently the French 
were dispossessed, as we have elsewhere recorded, of 
patches of the large estate given to De Monts, — Nova 
Scotia in 1710, and Cape Breton in 1745, — mere 
strips, it is true, compared with that broad-sweeping 
tract around which they had carried chain and com- 
pass, and planted the boundary stakes of stockades 



THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 215 

and forts, but which touched their national pride at 
its veiy heart centre. 

The French growth in America was as steady as it 
was early in starting. Five years before the Pilgrim 
fathers and mothers landed at Plymouth, French 
missionaries had erected bark chapels in Maine, and 
consigned by devojit rites the Pine State to the Vir- 
gin's protection. While the Calvinists of Massachu- 
setts Bay, the Plymouth Colony, and Connecticut 
were sturdily settling, by wordy argument, the 
grounds of their religious belief. Fathers Brebeuf, 
Lallemand, and other Gallic Jesuits were steadily 
and stealthily acquiring new groimds .for the Pope 
and the French king. Barefooted emissaries, in 
serge, and girded, like the Baptist in the Judsean wil- 
derness, with girdles about their loins, patiently and 
slowly travelling twelve hundred miles westward, foot- 
weary, yet sustained by spiritual zeal, skirted those 
inland seas. Lakes Ontario, Erie, Huron, and Michigan, 
crossed the head- waters of the Hudson, the Ohio, and 
Wisconsin, hauled their birch canoes over regions 
now boiling with oil-wells, hissing with steam-driven 
factories, or lit up by the passing splendors of palace 
rail-cars, and had thus, as early as 1650, planted the 
Eoman cross and the French lily side by side, as far 
west as Fond du Lac, and the cool head-fountains of 
Lake Superior. Fur-traders followed the Jesuit mis- 
sionaries. These sought to clothe the Indians with a 
warm belief in the teachings of the Society of Jesus, 
and in the supremacy of his Catholic Majesty of 
France ; those hastened after to unclothe the otter, 
the beaver, and other living fur-dealers of the small 



216 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 217 

packs which they carried on their own hacks, and to 
obtain possession of those which their fellows had 
yiekled up to the sharp persuasions of the cinnamon- 
stained hunters and trappers. Eeligious zeal, infiain- 
mg French blood, and glowing through a patriotic 
national emulation with the English settlements alon<r 
the i^tlantic slope, within the next twenty-five years'^ 
launched canoes upon and traversed the great lakes 
pushed down the principal rivers running southward 
from Quebec to St. Paid, gathered proselytes hy 
preaching, and sldns by trading, and encompassing 
the needs, instincts, and revenges of the various Indian 
tribes scattered through this vast region, — exceptinn- 
always the Five Nations, which uniformly adhered to 
the English,— established a cordon of French alli- 
ances and influences, which in time of peace stretched 
Its protecting Hne between them and their Eno-lish 
rivals, and in war vibrated to their touch, and twanoed 
quivers fuU of arrows on their hereditary foes. These 
unwearying teachers and traders were now to take 
possession, in the name of France and Eome, of the 
valley of the Mississippi, and to scatter the seeds of 
CxaUic civilization all down its prolific breadth, and 
over its wide deltas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi 
and Alabama. In 1673, the Jesuit, James ^larquette' 
having pre^^ously penetrated from Quebec throuo-h 
the intervening wilderness to Sault St. Marie aSd 
there established the first white settlement iii the 
present State of Michigan, set out, with Joliet and two 
tawny interpreters, to trace the mysteries of the Great 
Ixiver of America. Sailing down the AVisconsin Eiver 
md reaching in a few days that wide-rolhng flood 
10 ^ 



218 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

which we now call the Mississippi Eiver, and floating 
on its rough but kindly bosom for one hundred and 
eighty miles, they landed on its western bank, and, 
crossing a narrow portage, struck, without hurting, 
the Des Moines Eiver. They were the first white 
men in Iowa, and next to De Soto, one hundred and 
tliirty-one years before them, the only pale children 
that had ever looked into the wrinkled face of the 
Father of Waters. Here they were met by four red 
men, who, in answer to their inquiries, loftily pro- 
claimed themselves to be " Illinois " or " Men." The 
spirit of Chicago, thus filtrated, antedated its own 
settlement over one hundred and fifty years. Re- 
embarking, these Gallic adventurers swept on down 
the rapidly rushing river unsnagged ; passed in safety 
the large open mouth of the Missouri ; overlooked the 
future site of St. Louis ; refused to listen to the temp- 
tation which beckoned them to ascend the Ohio to the 
future metropolis of bacon ; floated along over the rust- 
ing armor of De Soto, without diving for it, keeping a 
good lookout on the dangerous territory of Arkansas 
on their right, and Mississippi on their left, until they 
at last reached the point where the Arkansas Eiver 
hastens to throw its burden of earth and water upon 
the back of the giant stream. Here they found In- 
dians with European weapons of steel ; and they re- 
turned back, retracing their courageous steps home- 
ward. Marquette, let us add, preached for two years 
to the wild men in and around the future Chicago, 
and finally died upon the borders of a little stream in 
Michigan, which gratefully perpetuates his name in 
its own. 



THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 219 

Brave Marquette ! He escaped the perils of Chi- 
cago to yield up his spirit amid the innocencies of 
Michigan. 

In 1682 La Salle, the French fur-trader, ventured 
down the JVIississipjii to the Gulf, without stopping to 
take tlie bluff outposts that sentinelled the future 
Vicksburg, and without halting over niglit at Natchez, 
and encountering tlie loss of all his earnings in that 
hazardous, porous, and absorbing place. Two years 
later he formed one of a colony sent out from Eochelle, 
in France, by the minister Colbert, and was wrecked 
in the Bay of Metagorda, the first of that large series 
of castaways in that peculiarly enterprising empire 
called Texas. 

France thus added the lone star to her American 
constellation. 

Although the entire French population in America, 
in 1688, was, by their own count, only eleven thou- 
sand two hundred and forty-nine, against more than 
ten times that number of English-speaking colonists, 
they had ere the close of that century erected mission- 
houses and trading-posts from the mouth of the Ken- 
nebec, in Maine, w^estward and northward to the 
Falls of Minnehaha, and southward down the Missis- 
sippi, through Louisiana, Texas, and Southern Missis- 
sippi. French forts and stockades showed defiant 
guns at Niagara, Crown Point, Detroit, St. Louis, and 
along the mud-bearing delta of the river, that La 
Salle had, first of wdiite men, overcome with a birch 
canoe. 

Eastward the adventurous French next advanced 
along the sinuous shores of the Gulf In 1702, on 



220 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

the western bank of the Mobile Eiver, and upon the 
thirsty sand-plain which comes down to drink its 
waters, Mobile was founded by Bienville. Two years 
following, an invoice of twenty young French girls was 
sent out to helj? the census-taker. The lot suiting well, 
a second consignment of twenty-three was despatched 
the next year. These vivacious goods, however, it 
may be incidentally remarked, rose the following year, 
in price and self-estimation, and formed what is called 
" The Petticoat Insurrection," a rebellion against the 
limited amount of Indian corn served out during a 
season of scarcity. But more corn coming out they 
acknowledged it, and went down in pleased submis- 
sion and quiet. 

Lively Frenchmen now multiplied along the yeasty 
Gulf. In 1718 Bienville, then the French governor 
of Louisiana, courageously braving the alligators and 
swamp snakes, whose crescent attitude might haxe 
terrified a son of St. Patrick, began the city of New 
Orleans, of which, four years afterwards, Charlevoix, 
the historian and traveller, who visited it, gives this 
description : " The place has a population of about two 
hundred. I find it to consist of one hundred cabins 
disposed with little regularity ; a large wooden ware- 
house ; two or three dwellings that would be no orna- 
ment to a French village, and the half of a sorry store- 
house, which they were pleased to lend to the Lord, 
but of wliich he had scarcely taken possession when 
it was proposed to turn him out to lodge in a tent." 
These kind of loans, some maliciously aver, have con- 
tinued fashionable in the Crescent City from that time 
to the present. However that may be, certain it is 



THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 221 




222 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

that the French settlements in America — a succinct 
narrative of which we liad purposely deferred to give 
in connection with their last desperate struggle for 
power — had at the close of King George's war, in 
1748, reached tlieir greatest extension. Imperial, too, 
was their stretch. Beginning at St. John's, New 
Brunswick, and dotting the wide area that fills seven- 
teen hundred miles between that point and the Missis- 
sippi Eiver, at the present spunky little city of St. Paul, 
and stretching down that river fourteen hundred miles 
to its outlet, and so spreading westward into Texas, and 
eastward through INIississippi and Alabama, until they 
confronted the old Spanish plantation in Florida, these 
settlements zoned on three sides with a spiked belt 
the thirteen English Colonies on the Atlantic. 

Around the middle of the eighteenth century, the 
accumulations of hatred through the preceding four 
had gathered to a festering head the hostile memo- 
ries of the French race of English assumption, vic- 
tories, and national contempt : and . so through all 
this vidde circuit of settlement, under cassock and 
surplice, under the coat of the soldier and the bear- 
skin of the trader, beat zealous French hearts, ready 
to assert the claims of a king deemed by them right- 
fully in possession, and to earn the absolution of a 
spiritual sovereign at Eome, ready, since the schism of 
Henry VIII., to be given to any one who would de- 
spoil or destroy the heretic English. 

Young America, now at the budding period of her 
sweet sixteen, was, with her personal charms, her 
ample landed dower, and her ampler future expecta- 
tions, a damsel well worth the keenest and best efforts 



THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 223 

of the two European rivals. Trance, besides being 
fired with the desire of getting possession of the large 
commissions likely to accrue from the handling her 
handsome estate, was anxious to make her Eoman 
Catholic. For one hundred years she had been en- 
deavoring to persuade the young girl to take from 
lierseK and place around her fair neck a rosary, among 
whose beads, at regular intervals, were interspersed 
some larger than the others wrought into shapes of 
cannon, swivels, little forts, and stockades. 

England, ever looking after rich wards in chancery, 
with solid, landed cares, requiring a guardian, had as 
assiduously sought to gain the custody, and even to 
win the hand of the fresh and rosy American. She 
had not failed to observe the long a,nd carefully made 
rosary, and had sought several times angrily to tear it 
off her neck with a glaived hand, and had more than 
once instigated the Iroquois to cut the shining chain 
at Lakes Cliamplain and Erie and on the Monongahela, 
and to scatter the metallic beads. She had also sent 
emissaries from the seaboard westward, bearing Prot- 
estant school-houses and churches, mission-houses, 
traders' articles, and Saxon notions, to barter and 
exchange for the coveted rosary. 

Each of the suitors, it was evident, was more intent 
upon the maiden's fortune than her affections, more 
concerned about her lots than her lot. It was also 
abundantly manifest that the long-standing feuds and 
contentions over her possession and custody must at 
last and forever be decided. 

The fight for the championship for the belt of 
America could no longer be postponed. 



224 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

John Bull, bluff, beef-fed, plucky, and long-winded, 
weigliing forty stone, stepped into the ring, tossed his 
tarpaulin to the centre, and having tipped off a bottle 
of Bass's double XX, challenged Johnny Crapeau to 
fight it out for the lass. The Frenchman stripped at 
once for the fight, and with a nimble courtesy, thinly 
concealing his disdain, glided within the ropes which 
now surrounded the champions of Europe. Into the 
middle of the ring the belt was thrown. It was em- 
broidered with Indian bead-work at one end and with 
beautifully wrought and valuable cotton fringes at the 
other, while picturesque figures of forest, lake, and 
plain set off the centre, and precious jewels and costly 
stones glittered all along either edge. 

For nine years that great and deadly boxing-match 
lasted. 

Why should we dwell upon it in detail ? The 
world's reporters were there, and have given full and 
accurate accounts, which have been read everywhere, 
except in France, with animated interest. 

Most briefly, however, we may summarize the con- 
test. 

At the first call, each competitor came promptly 
forward, each eying the other warily, but with ill- 
suppressed dislike and jealousy. Some feints fol- 
lowed. A few passes were cautiously made, as if 
each was measuring his adversary and feeling for his 
strong and weak points. At length a rapid and dex- 
terous touch of Mr. Bull's stomach sent him uneasily 
back to his corner. Time was called for the second 
round in 1755, and, leaping forward, the alert Gaul 
struck his heavy, blundering antagonist in a weak spot 



THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 225 

in front, called Fort du Quesne, from which he reeled 
back to his place, and was held up for a time in a 
fainting condition by one George Washington, a young 
man of twenty-two, then a friend of Mr. Bull, and in- 
vited to be present. Eecovering after a little time, 
Mr. Bull suddenly sprang up in intense suffering and 
mortification, and made across the ring in fury ; but 
scarcely had he got within reach of the Frenchman, 
when he received a stunning blow on his very Crown 
Point. Time being up, the stout Briton again advanced 
towards his adversary with a most menacing manner, 
and struck out full from the shoulder, as if he in- 
tended to leave an awkward scar in the face, but 
missing his footing, he fell forward in a pool of water, 
named Ontario, the angry Gaul rolling over him, 
and punishing him when down in a manner deemed 
almost foul by the spectators. On the fourth round, 
in 1757, the Saxon pugilist rushed confidently forward, 
and aimed a direct thrust at a very ugly pimple on 
the Frenchman's face, called Louisburg ; but the Celt 
skiKuUy parried the home thrust, and, while his adver- 
sary was gathering himself to a second onset, delivered 
a regular Montcalm settler at Ticonderoga, a very 
tender British point, which drew blood in profusion. 

Thus far the heavy Englishman had been worsted 
in every encounter; but on the next round he ad- 
vanced from his wintry corner with great caution, set 
his teeth together firmly, and, making a feint, struck 
his antagonist, ere he had recovered, two quick, telling 
blows, one on his face, completely crushing that ugly 
pimple, and the other on that spot in the chest still 
sore. Fort du Quesne ; but while the Englishman was 
10* o 



226 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

all too intent upon these, his antagonist got in an- 
other Montcalm settler on that English mouth, Lake 
Champlain, which brought out blood and water quite 
distressing for innocent spectators to witness. 

Both parties now retired to their corners, the French- 
man pretty well exhausted, Mr. Bull just getting 
warmed up to the fight, and both, if possible, more in- 
furiated than ever. Each was thoroughly sponged, and 
on time being called for the sixth round, in 1759, 
John Bull strode completely across the ring to the 
spot which his adversary had chosen, glaring like a 
very Wolfe. He had tasted blood, his own was up, 
and his leonine nature was roused for a crushing 
spring. Quickly and rapidly he planted a blow be- 
tween the Gaul's blue eyes, breaking the bridge of his 
nose at Point Levi. To evade this blow, the Gaul 
leaped back and attempted to parry it, and at the 
same time to inflict upon his enemy another Mont- 
calm settler; "but quick as thought Mr. Bull, heavy as 
he was, sprang upon a small mound called the Plains 
of Abraham, and there, swinging his sinewy arm high 
in the air, brought down his ponderous fist full upon 
the Frenchman's head. Staggering backwards to the 
ropes, the Celt fell headlong, bloody and cruelly hurt. 

To the on-lookers it was manifest that the hot con- 
test was virtually decided; but a resentment that 
pulsed through every vein urged the Frenchman to a 
few more unsuccessful efforts. Coming up slowly to 
the summons in the three last rounds, in 1760, 1761, 
and 1762, just making time and saving himself from 
the confession of defeat, he sank down at the end of 
the ninth round, spent in spirits and strength, but 



I 



THE CHAMPIONSHIP FOR THE AMERICAN BELT. 227 




228 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

vexed and angry with his adverse fortune. A herald, 
advancing in the centre of the ring, proclaimed that 
Johnny Crapeau withdrew his claim to the belt, only 
stipulating, in consideration of the past, that he might 
keep a hit of the fringe off its western end. 

John Bull, picking up the coveted prize, announced 
in a bluff, resolute voice to the by-standers that the 
young lady, with the belt, dower, and expectations, aU 
now passed to him forever. 

Future chapters will show how little he knew of the 
maiden whom he claimed to have won. 

Meanwhile Jean Crapeau signed and delivered to his 
English victor a release of all his claims to the dam- 
sel's lands lying east of the Mississippi. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

The People as Yeast. — The Fermentation. — Washington, Samuel Adams, 
Patrick Henry, Rutledge, Franklin, Otis, and others, and their Value 
in the Colonial Fermenting-Pots. — State Courtships in 1754, 1765, and 
1774, tend to a more Perfect Union. — How Home Confidences oper- 
ate. — What Effect the English Navigation Acts had on American 
Swimmers. — Lord North and Charles Townshend. — Colonial Assem- 
blies and Country Dances. — Dislike of Impositions. — That small 
Boston Tea-Party. — The large Amount of Atlantic Water between 
the Tea Seller and Tea Purchaser. — When Tea can't be sweetened. 
— Be-cause as a Cause. 

WHOLE reams of good, white paper might he 
consumed, as they have often before been 
used, and greatly to the advantage of the manufac- 
turer thereof, in spreading before our readers the vari- 
ous causes of the American Revolution. 

We might collect from dairies North, South, East, 
and West enough milk and water to float entire car- 
goes of reasons and explanations for that separation 
which " in the course of human events " is apt to take 
place between mothers, even good ones, and daughters, 
and which is not usually retarded by the fact, that the 
mother is selfish, looks to her own interest exclusively, 
finds fault with the grown-up girl, and seems deter- 
mined to get all the work out of, and to bestow as lit- 
tle as possible upon, her ; and when the girl, on the 
other hand, is pretty high-spirited, has plenty of beaux, 



230 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

friends, and good health, and a nice, comfortable prop- 
erty of her own. AVe might, we repeat, collect all this 
ocean of milk and water together; but upon taking 
counsel of our own experience, we have concluded to 
condense this troublesome mass into a few panfuls of 
cream, which will, we feel sure, contain all the sub- 
stance, richness, and compressed value of the entire 
sea. Skimming over the wide surface, we obtain, 
then, these creamy globules, the round causes of the 
American Eevolution. 

Is^ Cause. — The people, — the causa causas, — the 
yeast, whose fermentation in the pots, placed in vari- 
ous American chimney-corners, raised off their lids 
and opened their owners', to see their own rights and 
interests. 

2d Cause. — George Washington, Samuel Adams, 
Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, 
Joseph Warren, John Eutledge, James Otis, Henry 
Laurens, and a few others, without whom the ferment- 
ing-pots might have " run to emptyings." 

M Cause. — The duties vainly sought to be raised 
by George III. from the colonists, and which unex- 
pectedly raised duties in them, that fitted them, not 
with, but to, a T. 

4:th Cause. — The glimpses obtained during those 
stolen colonial courtships, in 1754, 1765, and 1774, — 
those sly unions at Albany, New York, and Philadel- 
phia, — of the fuller blessings and happiness of "a 
more perfect Union." 

hth Cause. — The identities of language, interests, 
love of liberty, capacities for legislation and home con- 
trol throughout the various Colonies, and the felt un- 



CAUSES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 231 

wisdom of looking three thousand miles for what they 
could better find at home. 

%th Cause. — George III., Lord North, and Charles 
Townshend. 

Ith Cause. — The British Navigation Acts, which 
prevented American navigation and dried up the At- 
lantic for American bottoms. 

By these heavy machines the seas were made all up 
hill to American, and easy down hill for English ships. 

^th Cause. — The colonial assemblies, where Ameri- 
cans learned their own country dances, and unlearned 
the court quadrilles. 

Wi Cause. — The strong Saxon dislike of imposi- 
tions which had accompanied the emigrants hither as 
a principle, and was always kept here, both principal 
and interest. 

lO^/i Cause. — That little Boston tea-party, and the 
small unpleasantness at Lexington. 

11th Cause. — The large amount of Atlantic water 
which prevented the English tea seller from observing 
the rights of the American tea purchaser. After tliis 
discovery of EngKsh near-sightedness, the expense of 
sweetening the tea to make it acceptable to American 
palates, even when the cost was reduced to three- 
pence per pound, was found to be intolerable. 

Last Cause. — Be-cause. 



BOOK THIRD. 

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 

1775 TO 1789. 

" L'Histoire c'est La Revolution." 

Montesquieu, De V esprit des Lois. 



CHAPTEE I. 

THE FIRST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. GRIEV- 
ANCES; THE PREPARATION; THE START. 

The Express Train of the American Revolution. — The Hard Lot of the 
Colonists, and what they got from it. — Colonial Governors, like Old 
Topers at a Free Opening of a Tavern. — The Miseries of a Visit 
from Relatives poor and proud. — How, like poor Fowls, the Navi- 
gation Acts laid many bad Eggs. — Examples cited. — Parliament- 
ary Laws ingeniously floored and roofed. — English Strabismus, or 
Squint-eyeduess, sought to be made Fashionable in the Colonies. — 
Success in Canada. — English Tubs to catch Revenue off American 
Slopes. — Manufacture of Hats prohibited ; how and where the Fur 
flew. — What a Cute Yankee saw from the Top of the American Roof. 

— How Four Yards are worth more than Five. — Bull-yism defined, 
and its Laws stated. — The First Bill to raise Revenue ; the l.irge 
Bird behind it described. — Sent over to America, it was foul-ly treat- 
ed. — Molasses denied to Colonists. — Effects on Yankee Appetites 
and on the Increase of Straws in Custom-House Casks. — Stamps and 
Stampedes. — The Act repealed ; the Sting left in. — Another Bill and 
larger Bird behind it in 1767. — The First Blood. — The Wheel starts ; 
its Hub, Spokes, and Periphery. — English Bees swarm over and settle 
in Boston and other tender Parts. — The Dis-cordant Sounds at Con- 
cord. — George Washington ; his Appearance and Costume, and what 
befell him, June, 1775. — Gage falls from a Tree. — Why and Howe ? 

— Washington seizes Boston Neck. — The Spasms. — Bunker Hill gets 
a Scar and aftei'wards an Ugly Monumental Patch. — The Boone Col- 
onists in Kentucky. — How they blazed a-way thither from Virginia. 

— Washington at Cambridge. — Unseasoned Troops seasoned. — Gen- 
eral Montgomerj^ earns Laurels at Quebec mixed with Cypress. — 
The Revolutionary Wheel throws off Dusty Colonial Governors. — 
How Washington broke up the Hessian Swarm at Boston, and Howe 
they flew to Halifax. — Washington attends a Lecture in Boston. — 
General Lee's Neck-and-Neck Race with Sir Henry Clinton for New 
York ; Lee ahead 120 Minutes. — Sir Hemy and a Party of Jolly Dogs 
alight near Charleston, and how the Waspish Lee lit upon and stung 
them. — Where the Jolly Dogs then went. — The Wheel well started. 



236 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




Britannia forces Tea on her trouble- 
some Child. 



THEEE is always a 
strange curiosity to 
see an express-train 
go by. Everybody 
crowds up to witness 
- tlie great red eye 
glare and scowl, as 
if it resented the 
safe inspection wliicli 
those on the platform 
give it, as it rushes 
past. Every one, 
young and old, watch- 
es, with concentrated 
interest, the momentarily visible heads of the passen- 
gers, dusty, dishevelled, and hot, seen through the pass- 
ing windows, as the train pants, hurrying around a 
curve, into the darkness. Not a little of tlie interest 
is enhanced by the feeling that it will brmg up safely 
far away in a metropolitan depot, and there decant its 
well-shaken, effervescing freight. 

So stand we, surrounded by our readers, on the 
platform of history, to see the American Eevolution 
rush along upon its own way, grim, earnest, resolute, 
tracking its onward march towards the great end 
for which it set out. 

" Le genie," says Buffon, " c'est la patience." If the 
naturalist's definition be true, the colonial patience 
constituted a most remarkable exliibition of genius. 

In 1763 the greater part of the colonists were tlie 
descendants of men who had escaped from hard civil 
and ecclesiastical exactions in their home lands, and 



FIRST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 237 

had set up for themselves in an unappropriated field. 
From this new lot they sought to extract, by the dif- 
ficult labor of one hand, its reluctant yield for subsist- 
ence, and by the other to keep off from it enemies 
ready to take and cut their crops. Uninvited pension- 
ers, called Governors, were soon sent out, in showy 
tinsel, to tithe their laboriously earned products, and 
to fence in by golden bars wrought by the settlers 
the royal prerogatives and pretensions, from which 
those settlers had endeavored to rid themselves by 
self-exile. In some of the Colonies mint and cummin 
were extracted for a church, between whose ecclesias- 
tical detectives and themselves they had essayed to 
put three thousand miles of disagreeable pickle, with 
rods enough in it to terrify even lean curates with 
little to throw up. The English civO. list, portioned 
off upon the young emigrants in the shape of office- 
holders, sucked up — like an old toper in a newly 
established tavern — the very best that the place 
afforded. These officials thus sujtfered at first to par- 
take of the generous, open-house entertainment, soon 
cast around them to effect a permanent claim for free 
commons, where they had been only tolerated by an 
unselfish hospitality. As no one likes to be eaten out 
or evicted from his own house and home, even by 
assumed and softly spoken friends, these self-imposed 
guests were naturally regarded as poor, proud relatives, 
who came unbidden at first, put on company airs, in- 
sisted on company fare, needed extra waiting on, bred 
disaffection among the servants, and set up the chil- 
dren to fancies beyond the parental means or au- 
thority. 



238 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The Navigation Acts, to whicli we have already 
adverted, which sought, contrary to all equity, right, or 
decency, to compel the poor fugitives from plenty and 
power to send away their scanty surplus of corn, and 
to get what few things they needed and could afford 
with difficulty to procure, oceanwise, and in vessels 
exclusively owned, built, manned, and officered in 
England, were standing grievances. They were so 
hard and stiff, that every one ran against them, and 
after picking himself up, looked back at them in very 
bad humor and with adjectives which in such mo- 
ments some utter, but which types refuse to immor- 
talize. 

Poor fowls breed rapidly. The Navigation Acts 
soon laid other vicious eggs. On the restoration of 
the monarchy in the person of Charles II., in 1660, the 
colonists were still further tied up by an act which 
restricted them in the disposition of their salable prod- 
ucts to England alone, — a very desirable thing for 
English purchasers, but deemed by the pinched colo- 
nists rather rough upon them. The affectionate step- 
children, however, overlooked this selfishness of the 
cross-grained old step-mother, and clung with roman- 
tic attachment to the dear old homestead, from which 
they got nothing but cheap messages of cunning en- 
dearment, in return for the substantial contributions 
which were taken back in the Thames-built clippers. 

These acts of Parliament were of course floored 
with thick, wide planking of well-jointed terms, and 
roofed in with a royal signature, which in English, and 
especially in colonial eyes until opened, made even 
thin shingles shine like stars ; but for all this parlia- 



FIRST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 239 

mentary carpentering the gales and storms of real life 
soughed and swept in through the clapboarding, some- 
times chilling, and sometimes wetting, the colonial 
tenants. 

Colonial lands, too, were given away as loosely and 
as liberally as by Congress now; then to royal, as 
now to railroad, favorites. A commercial strabismus, 
or English squint-eyedness, was sought to be made 
fashionable in the North American communities, just 
as now prevails in Canada, — an apparent look at their 
own interests in one direction, while in fact by this 
crooked optical inversion, the eye is all the time look- 
ing intently in quite another quarter. That direction 
was of course northeastwardly towards those little 
specks of islands, that were left, in the miscellaneous 
creation of things, near the outer rim of Europe, and 
so diminutive, that the very strain to discover them 
behind piles of parliamentary selfishness and sup- 
ports, huge stacks of manufactured iron, steel, cotton, 
wool, and puffy conceits, was sure to injure the sight 
and at last to produce qualms and nausea. 

A single tub will catch all the rain that falls over a 
very wide roofed house, if the gutters are rightly ad- 
justed. The little tub of England cauglit all the 
waters that ran from the wide American slopes. Then 
she had them all around her. She has many still ; an 
East India tub, a West India tub, an Australian tub, 
etc. Tlie bore of the tubes which lead to these are not, 
perhaps, as great now as formerly ; but now the waters 
are distilled before they are sent through, and so run a 
much more profitable stream. Of course she labels 
them aU with very fine names, " Philanthropy," " Free 



240 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Trade," " Justice," etc. It matters • little, however, 
what the name is : the stuff in the tub is of the same 
color, a buff yellow, and of the same metallic ingredi- 
ents. 

Her little North American tub, at the j)eriod of 
which we speak, was continually changing, — a larger 
one being substituted every few years, as new gutters 
were laid down, and new ways found to enlarge the 
water-sheds. In 1732, for example, the colonists were 
forbidden to sell hats to each other, — a felt grievance 
which made the fur fly for a time ; but, as usual, it 
only flew from, although for, England. The next year, 
another gutter was put down by the parliamentary 
tin-man. Hatters were only allowed two apprentices, 
— a provision which, although very merciful now, 
considering the short work and manners and verv long 
pay of employees, — was then English disinterestedness. 
A few years later, the spirits and sweetening of the 
colonists were taxed, of course not to raise the former 
or increase the latter, but all for the benefit of that little 
Anglo-American tub. Manufactories of various kinds 
were prohibited to be set up, the profits arising from 
the sales in America of the articles manufactured in 
England dripping through the philanthropic tubes 
into the tight English vat. At last some patriotic and 
far-seeing colonist, getting out through the scuttle- 
way upon the wide American roof, discovered not only 
pipes leading in all directions over it, but, on looking 
sharply around with a half-prying Yankee curiosity, 
also remarked some curiously contrived parliamentary 
ladders of rope, hemp, leather, and other material, 
placed on the rear of the house, and cunningly attaclied 



FIRST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 241 

to the pipes by patented clasps, stamped " Keveniie " ; so 
that, by an arrangement peculiarly English, and in- 
vented by some benevolent gentleman over there, 
an official friend inside could, for example, cut off a 
yard from every piece five yards long, or take out two 
quarts from a bushel of wheat, or a pint from a gallon 
of molasses or sack, and pass these clippings down the 
back ladders and so off home to England, while the 
colonists were meanwhile entertained by an argument, 
solidly supported by figures, and looking as convincing 
as a six-barrelled revolver pointed at you, to prove 
that there was no loss incurred, but that, on the con- 
trary, it was the very way to make the remainder more 
valuable. 

As long as France stayed in the American school- 
house there were two big, full-grown bullies, whose 
mutual jealousy and antagonism were the best protec- 
tion of the children from either ; but after the over- 
throw of M. Jean Crapeau in 1763, Mr. Bull thought 
that he could have things just as he pleased, could sit 
down where he liked, in such gear as he chose to make 
himself comfortable in, — shirt-sleeves or hunting-coat, 
'muddy or indecently short, — could eat up any one's 
lunch if he fancied, and munch the choicest fruit that 
the youngsters were keeping for their own use at play- 
time. And so, by a law of bullyism, — which is hu- 
man nature ossified by success, — the moment of the 
triumph over the one standing champion, w^as the 
moment when the intoxication of fancied supreme 
power, producing a vertigo of insolence, brought out 
around the object of the championship rivals never 
before suspected. 

11 p 



242 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

In a word, by slow and painful training, tlie Colo- 
nies had become their own champions. 

The very year that saw the treaty of peace signed 
between France and England, by which the former 
gave up all her American ^possessions east of the Mis- 
sissippi, and resigned the belt of North America to 
the latter, George Grenville, the English minister, gave 
notice that he should introduce into Parliament a bill 
to oblige every colonist, who used in any way receipts, 
notes, drafts, leases, deeds, mortgages, or any such crafty 
documents, to buy from the British government and 
put upon them stamps, the proceeds of which sale was 
to be spent, of course, not among the colonists them- 
selves, but in England, in paying the national debt or 
in some other facetious way. Of course, Americans 
did not object to stamps in themselves, provided they 
helped to make or to hold the die which printed them, 
and had a hand in grooving and directing the chan- 
nels in which the pay for them should flow. But they 
did object — and as the event proved most sanguina- 
rily — to the slicing of their family loaf by a parlia- 
mentary knife called a stamp act, sharpened on a 
London stone, and whittling off their living even with 
the sparing charity of the Bull family. They did not 
think it either safe or right for any Taurian, or Teu- 
tonic, or Gallic chap, however gentlemanly in man- 
ners or benevolent in professions, to be trusted in 
the pantry, there to use to any extent what he might 
find, whether articles of luxury, as pies or other poi- 
sons, or necessities, as bread, butter, cider, or other 
field distillations. 

The bill of Mr. Grenville was a little one, — very 



FIRST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 243 

small and very timid, — but there was a bird behind 
it, as large as all the English crows and jackdaws put 
together. The bird was not introduced until the next 
year, 1764, when it was tricked off wdth some bright 
beads and spangles around its neck, to disguise its 
genus. But many in England discovered immediately 
that it belonged to the family Falco Britannicus, the 
genuine old-fashioned British falcon, w^th strong, sharp 
claws and curved short bill to seize, and long, pow^erful 
wings to bear away across seas, the colonial prey. It 
is a bird now" shot at by every philosophic, well- 
charged English muzzle whenever it makes its appear- 
ance ; but at the time of which we speak there were 
public game-keepers of the Grenville kind, not only in 
England but in other countries, who believed in train- 
ing and keeping up the breed of parliamentary or 
royal falcons for colonial and also for home service. 
These well-fed keepers stoutly maintained that it was 
right for these fowls, deigning to leave their royal 
perches in Hesse or Hanover, to alight for their royal 
pleasure upon private barn-yards and in granaries, and 
that the people w^ere proper game and profitable sport, 
and should even feel honored by the eagle-like visits. 
It was thought best, however, by the English hunts- 
man of state to send across the Atlantic and exhibit 
here specimens of the fowl. Patrick Henry, Samuel 
Adams, James Otis, Richard Henry Lee, and others, 
well acquainted with the game and domestic birds of 
North America, at once pointed out and denounced 
the cruel spurs which this short-billed, sharp -clawed 
British falcon wore. Others, if possible more out- 
spoken, declared their opinion that this bird never 



244 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

could be domesticated on this side the ^vater, but 
would get its spurs cut away and perhaps its well- 
feathered neck wrung, whenever it was sent over for 
real use among the colonists. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Bull declared that the colonists 
should not have any molasses, to lick, unless he him- 
seK brought it and sold it to them. Of course from 
that time forward New England people got to love 
molasses with patriotic obstinacy, and above all things 
liked to tickle it with a straw out of those very sol- 
emn-looking and otherwise forsaken casks, lying in the 
neglected custom-houses at Boston, Salem, Newport, 
and New Haven. 

In 1765, the new bird was brought over full-fledged, 
guarded by numerous fowl-fanciers, who watched it 
vigilantly on both sides, as the lion and unicorn are 
represented watching the British crown. But as usual, 
American quickness to its own interests was quite 
equal to British selfishness, and, ere the heavy guar- 
dians could turn around to see who of the many spec- 
tators was teasing and worrying the bird, his feathers 
were dreadfully plucked, and the poor thing left with 
exposed claws and crooked bill to the keen ridicule of 
the by-standers. 

On the 1st of November, when the Stamp Act was 
to go into effect, most of tlie bales of stamped paper, 
kindly sent out to emblazon colonial writings, had 
either been destroyed or shipped back to their parlia- 
mentary manufacturers. Colonial pluck went further. 
It agreed upon total abstinence from everything for- 
eign-made, until the Stamp Act should be repealed. 
In 1766, after hot debate, the Stamp Act was repealed 



FIRST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 245 

by the British Parliament ; but not before its offen- 
sive sting was pulled out and pettishly thrown across 
the water in the form of a resolution, declaring the right 
of the London law manufactory to tax the Colonies 
wheneA'er they wanted any money. 

The old circumlocution office had neither learned 
how to do it, nor how graciously or gracefully to leave 
off attempts which had resulted in not doing it. 

During the year following, 1767, came another bill, 
with a still larger fowl behind it, a curious, sleepy- 
eyed, dove-colored bird, with prehensile claws admi- 
rably sheathed when not taking hold, but very strong 
when its real strength was tested. 

This bill was to tax glass, paper, painters' colors, and 
tea. More colonial pluck, — more total abstinence, — 
more brisk talk between governors and colonial legis- 
latures, — more effervescing revolutions produced by 
patriotic acids and alkalies stirred by newly cut sticks, 
— more courteous shows of loyalty and equally firm, 
resolute, belligerent acts. 

The colonial grievances were gathering into prepara- 
tions and generating motive-power to start the revolu- 
tionary wheel. 

At Boston, in March, 1770, the first blood was shed. 
The ink of the Boston " News-Letter," which was 
still published, seemed to have turned red, and was 
beginning to be let out. All duties were now re- 
pealed, except those on tea. The old sting was thus 
again left, and the colonial face, into which it thrust 
its tiny hornet spear, began to swell and inflame. 

Preparations were now made to drive back the 
English bees which were now seen to come over in 



246 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

swarms, and to settle clown around Boston and other 
tender spots. Congress — that academy of celebrated 
American state doctors — was called for in Septem- 
ber, 1774, to apply poultices and such other remedies 
as they deemed best to the inflamed parts. After 
much consultation together, feeling the patient's pulse 
and testing his vitality, they became convinced that 
they had to deal with one of those surgical cases 
which are quoted often afterwards as leading, and for 
the successful operation in which careful preparations 
must be made. 

The military revolutionary wheel was at length set 
in motion. It had thirteen spokes, made of various 
kinds of wood, all unseasoned ; but they were, after a 
little patient effort, compactly and well fitted into the 
hub. A patriotic band, put around its periphery, held 
the wheel together, and enabled it to work successfully 
many years, and to endure the strains and jars of colo- 
nial revolutionary wagoning. 

It is noteworthy that the first formal demonstration 
in the war, was the despatch by the British com- 
mander. Gage, April 18, 1775, of eight hundred men to 
destroy some colonial stores at Concord, — an irruption 
into the very temple of peace itself. At Lexington, 
half-way to their destination, this detachment was met 
by some seventy provincial volunteers, who entered a 
bayonet protest against this breach of the peace ; but 
this mild protestation was answered by a sharp, crack- 
ling retort, which was heard all through the Colonies. 
It was the mot de resistance. The protesters retired, 
and the detachment, riding eight miles further, to the 
Emerson-ian city, scattered the ammunition and food 



FIRST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 247 




248 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

there, and rode back again to Boston, being quickened 
on the way by fowling-pieces and duck-guns, dis- 
charged at the red -breasted coveys. On hearing the 
news of the battle of Lexington, Ethan Allen, gather- 
ing together a party of Green Mountain boys, present- 
ed himself on the evening of May 10, 1775, before 
the sleepy, dozy doors of Fort Ticonderoga, which 
were knocked open, and its commandant, De La Plaine, 
knocked up by a summons to surrender in the name 
of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress. 
The success of this little surprise party was much 
talked of, and raised more spirits than the revenue 
acts. 

Within Boston all of Gage's forces, numbering 
three thousand English, Scotch, and Irish regulars, 
with many hired Hessians and Waldeckers, now re- 
tired ; while twenty thousand very irregulars, farmers' 
boys, and mechanics, with John Stark in his bear-skin 
coat, Israel Putnam in leather apron, and other leaders, 
drawn by centripetal patriotism from their ill-supplied 
homes, and in such accoutrements as old family chests 
yielded up, assembled in a tumultuous crowd at the 
American camp, and formed a weak line around the 
land side of the city. While this cord was thus 
stretched on the weak side of Boston, — if, indeed, she 
ever had a weak side, — George AVashington, then 
forty-three years old, hitherto pursuing the double 
business of farmer and sunveyor, overlaying both ever 
with the cultured ease and polisli of a high-bred gen- 
tleman, already known to military men on both sides 
the sea by his practical capacity in their science, 
evinced in Braddock's march and defeat, confessedly 



FIRST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 249 

a large-headed, 'well-balanced, wise man, and of in- 
tense personal courage and patriotism, was, on the 
17th June, 1775, appointed Commander-in-Chief. No 
statelier figure than his — over six feet in height as it 
was, and cased ordinarily in large, roomy buckskin 
trousers, a handsomely fitting blue coat and buff vest 
— was seen at any time in the American camp for the 
next eight years. 

About the same time the British troops under Gage 
were reinforced, until they counted twelve thousand 
veterans. Gage, however, did not long swing on the 
military tree, or remain to be sliaken from the Boston 
bough by the Yankee farmers and mechanics. He was 
superseded by Sir William Howe, who, in a few days 
after Washington's appointment, landed at Boston, ac- 
companied by Sir Henry Clinton and General Bur- 
goyne. 

Believing that what cometh out of the mouth is 
more hurtful than what enters it, the American army 
now seized Boston Neck tightly. This contraction 
produced some spasms in the apoplectic-looking, newly 
arrived Englishmen, who moved galvanically towards 
Bunker's Hill, on the opposite side of the city. To 
this point Colonel Prescott, with one thousand men, — 
including some negroes, — was despatched ; and here, 
as is well known, he and Warren and their little 
party-colored regiment did such things, June 17, 1775, 
to General Howe and his .three thousand attacking 
men, reinforced by Clinton during the day, as have 
been deemed worthy of much speaking about ever 
since. 

The brow of Bunker Hill received that day, where 
■ 11* 



250 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Warren and others fell, a scar which not even the hard 
monumental patch since imposed upon it can make us 
wish to forget. Higher praise of that scar we cannot 
accumulate. 

While these patriotic doings were going on around 
Boston, movements equally patriotic were pushed for- 
ward in an entirely new quarter, — movements, in fact, 
which resulted in hiring the coachman of the Sun to 
drive for the future an American emigrant wagon- 
train, in company with the old Western solar line. 
Daniel Boone, then in his forty-iifth year, having four 
years before blazed a- way with his rihe through the 
woods from North Carolina across the Cumberland 
Mountains to the river of the same name, led out in 
May, 1775, a boon company, founding a Colony on 
the Kentucky Eiver, at first called Transylvania, but 
which subsequently threw off", with its liunting-shirt, 
this long Latinized cognomen, and stood at the dewy 
font to receive the dear old name of Kentucky. The 
little Colony started on good wholesome diet, — relig- 
ious toleration ; representatives elected by the peo- 
ple, from the people, for the people ; and taxation 
only by their ovra representatives. Sheltered by its 
seclusion from the now daily swelling insurrection 
on the Atlantic coasts, the riflemen's settlement grew 
apace, picking up its flints from the primeval rocks 
which propped up the neighboring Alleghany range, 
but pecking them for use only upon abundant game 
that hovered over its dinner-pots and sauce-pans, ready 
to drop into them at proper signals. 

In July, 1775, Washington went on to Cambridge 
and took charge of the Continental forces. These 



FIRST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 



251 



\NN t( r> 



n'n..-^ 




|i \ \ r * 



252 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

forces were, it is well known, about as unmanageable 
as those at work in volcanic mountains, sometimes 
making an ominous rumbling, sometimes erupting 
awkwardly for the peace of others near them, and oc- 
casionally discharging themselves most inconveniently 
for those whose duty it was to watch them. The hot 
patriotic principles, however, of these raw, unscored 
militia materials helped essentially the warm endeav- 
ors of Washington, Gates, Ward, and Lee to season 
them into tough disciplined, serviceable timber, and so 
to support loads and resist strains. In a few months 
even the most unpromising sticks were dry enough to 
be piled up around Boston, and thus to burn out 
General Howe. 

Following the old colonial habit of casting sheep's- 
eyes upon Canada whenever the dogs of war were 
unkennelled, that shepherd dog, Ethan Allen, scented 
game at Crown Point, on the western side of Lake 
Champlain. Bounding away in long leaps, without a 
whine or a howl to indicate his purpose or direction, 
he suddenly sprang upon the British flocks quietly 
feeding there, and effectually penned and secured 
them. Hardly stopping to be petted for this exploit, 
the brave colly tore off, with only a small pack of 
eighty, to Montreal ; but the British keepers there, 
apprised of his approach, managed, as he came up 
near the folds, to seize him, put a collar around his 
neck, and to send him to England, where, however, 
he never would hunt with the royal pack. 

General Montgomery was more fortunate ; for 
within a month after, having taken St. John's and 
Fort Chambly, he followed the footprints of Allen, 



FIRST TUEN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 253 

and captured Montreal. Leaving . about two hundred 
troops in that island city, — now the crowning jewel 
in the Anglo-American stomacher, — he pushed down 
the St. Lawrence, and at a point twenty miles above 
Quebec, absorbing the detachment of six hundred men 
led by the bold, dashing, unprincipled Arnold, he 
advanced upon tlie citadel of English America. Here 
in front of Quebec, after battling the cold for four 
weeks, the gallant Irishman, on the last day of 1775, 
amidst a storm of snow and of pelting iron hail, led 
on a vigorous assault against the place where, sixteen 
years before, in company with the brave Wolfe, he had 
gathered the bright laurels of victory, unmixed, as 
was not his commander's, — with the gloomy cypress. 
Now the cypress was all that he was destined to grasp 
from the grim rock which resented a second capture 
by the same mortal. 

He fell, however, as those fall who do more than 
achieve success, — deserving it. Under the portico of 
St. Paul's Church, in the city of New York, at the con- 
fluence of those pulsing streams of life which surge 
down Broadway and the Bowery, — gathering a volume 
sufficiently strong to overcome the heavy whirlpools 
of Wall Street, — lie what of Richard Montgomery was 
mortal, borne thither sixty-three years after his death 
by his grateful fellow-citizens, who have laid on the 
island of Manhattan, now glittering with superb edi- 
fices, no corner-stone nobler or more imperisliable than 
that which they then deposited. 

The Eevolutionary wheel had now fairly started, 
and one of the first results of its motion was the shak- 
ing off tliose dusty particles, the royal governors, — 



254 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Dunmore, in Virginia ; Lord William Campbell, in 
South Carolina ; Sir Joseph Wright, in Georgia ; and 
others, — each of whom, measuring his own weight on 
his own scales, fancied — as we now can read in their 
despatches to the Colonial Office — that he was him- 
self a stone large enough, if dropped in front of the 
wheel, to stop forever its further advance. 

The Hessian bees, shaken off the home twigs by 
their owners, the fussy, poverty-ridden dukes, princes, 
landgraves, and margraves, swarmed over and settled 
at Boston on the oaken boughs planted there by Lord 
Howe. George Washington was determined to make 
a vigorous effort to break up the hive and to get its 
military honey. In March, 1776, he drew near to 
Boston, sitting down on Dorchester Heights with an 
earth curtain before him, to guard against the stings 
of any vagrants that might stray away from the main 
swarm. Scarcely, however, had our general, in his 
buckskin breeches, begun to feel around the nest, 
before, to his great surprise, and to the infinite won- 
derment of George III., and his minister, Lord North, 
the entire swarm with a peculiar buzz, rose at four 
o'clock in the morning from tli^ir new-made hive 
and flew away in a bee-line for Halifax. Much 
honey, then particularly dear to Americans, was 
gathered after they left ; as much as two hundred 
and fifty combs, in the shape of cannon, and not a 
little of that bee dust, so very scarce in March, 1776, 
called powder. Washington was much concerned lest 
the pesky swarm might turn their flight and settle 
down in New York. So, after attending a lecture the 
night following his entrance into Boston, in order not 



FIRST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 255 

to excite by liis absence any hubbub in that literary 
and then religious place, he set in motion the great 
body of his troops towards the island of Manhattan. 

Major-General Charles Lee, a Welshman by birth, 
and a soldier of fortune, who had fought in Portugal . 
and Poland, mettlesome and waspish in temper, was 
despatched in April with other troops to New York, 
where, after a neck-and-neck race with Sir Henry 
Clinton, accompanied by a large British force from 
England, he arrived only two hours before his com- 
petitor. Sir Henry, although anxiously expected on 
shore by several British friends, at length concluded 
that it was too early in the season to alight so far 
north, and so cruised southward for a milder climate 
and reception. Sailing leisurely down our wave- 
dented shores, he joined the squadron of his old boon 
companions in arms. Admiral Sir Peter Parker and 
Earl Cornwallis, with some two thousand five hundred 
jolly dogs, hired at fourpence a day to come out and 
inspect our country. StroUing on together pleasantly 
in a warm latitude, with flying-fish to amuse them on 
the outside, and broiled fish inside the ships, they 
touched land at last near Charleston. The restless, 
waspish Lee, who had been also flying down south- 
wards over the land, hovering on quick wing and watch- 
ing the jolly dogs to see where they would come 
ashore, no sooner found that they thought of landing 
at Sullivan's Island, and visiting a military summer- 
house there, built of palmetto wood, and called Fort 
Moultrie, than he lit upon them, stung two hundred 
of them more or less uncomfortably, and compelled 
them all to go off wholly from that place, the pleasure 



256 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

of reaching wliicli depends so much upon the feelings 
of those to whom the visit is proposed. 

New England and the South were now alike freed 

O 

from British tourists and German musket-holders. 

Where Sir Henry and his jolly dogs, constituting 
one party, and Lord Howe with his lively squad, still 
enjoying themselves at Halifax after their rapid jour- 
ney from Boston, making up the other British set, 
would next prospect, much concerned the Continental 
Congress, George Washington, Charles Lee, and the 
colonial people generally. The uncertainty was soon 
ended. Lord Howe, sailing from Halifax, June 11th, 
reached Sandy Hook on the 25tli of the same month, 
and dropping anchor off Staten Island, July 2d, 
was soon joined by Sir Henry and his jolly dogs, 
feeling a little uneasy of stomach, and somewhat less 
merry than when they left England nearly three 
months before, and vowing, 'pon honor, that Sir Henry 
had somewhat taken them in at Charleston, although, 
in fact, the real trouble was that he had not taken 
them in at all there. 

Truly the Eevolutionary wheel was now well started, 
and began to get in earnest motion. 



CHAPTEK II. 

JULY FOURTH, 1776, AND SO FORTH, 

Review of our Historical Journey from the Start up to the Summit of the 
4th of July. — Resume of our Tramp through Pre-Columbian and 
Post-Columbian Times. — Our March from St. Augustine, via James- 
town and the Manhattan Cabins, to the Temperance Tavern at Plym- 
outh. — Descriptions of Indian Interruptions. — Polite Interferences 
of Gallic Gentlemen at Narrow Parts of the Road in 1689, 1710, 1745, 
etc. — Banditti on the Highways of History, English, French, and 
Dutch. — Blazing Description of the Summit, the Flagstaff, Flag, and 
Eagle. — The Grand Political Picnic there of Fifty-one Wise Men. — 
The Thunder-Storms around them ; and their Behavior. — General 
Account of this Group ; and how remarkable and marked. — Special 
Portraitures of Thirteen of them. — Some Peculiar Heads there, and 
how much George III. wanted them. — Prayer of John Adams. — A 
Great Freshet of a Speech and what it carried off. — A Remarkable 
Declaration made by Jefferson. — An Electrical Battery charged and 
discharged. — The Peppering George III. got. — How he worked Seven 
Years against the Declaration. — The Gunpowdery Effect of the first 
Fourth, and the Fire-Crackers since touched off by it. — Independence 
originally handled without Gloves ; now by Aldermen and very Com- 
mon Councilmen with a half-dozen Pair apiece. — The Fourths up to 
1850. — Tar-Barrel Eloquence. — Military and Civic Renown snatched 
on that Day. — What Eggs, containing Addling Heroes, pip on that 
Day. — How Swords embarrass Crooked Legs. — Militia Lines, and 
what Snarls they get into. — Dissolving Bursts of Golden Glories. — 
Effects of Sulplnir administered to a Rural Population. — Cakes of Gin- 
gerbread, and how they stuck in the Teeth. Stomach, and Memory. — 
Lamentations over the Decay of the Old-time Fourths. 

LONG time have we been climbing together up 
the political eminence, until we have at last 
reached its high summit, — the Fourth of July. Cold 



258 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

and bleak was the weather, and wholly new and un- 
cleared the path on which we set out, thousands of 
years ago, among the hitherto unknown, pre-Columbian 
regions of America. The way was beset with obstruc- 
tions, — heaps of coal and fossil remains, — and strewn 
with bones of races, human and animal, as strange even 
to our museums as they were novel to ourselves. 
Among these freshly discovered relics of our great an- 
cestors, we trode carefully, and lingered with pleased 
wonder among ruins, which shamed by their age and 
size the usurping glories of Egyptian, Chinese, and As- 
syrian antiquities. At last, however, having traversed 
those broad plains, over Mdiich hung the gray, uncer- 
tain twilight of chronicle and geological fiction, we 
emerged, by a sudden turn in the road, into the clearer 
light and more solid undebatable ground rediscovered 
and retouched by more modern nations ; convinced by 
our large inspection and survey, that those who landed 
on our shores long before Columbus — the Cabots, 
Cortereals, Verrazannis, Vespuccis, etc. — had, like 
provident patres familias, packed carefully away large 
stores of carbonized fuel and bone manure for the use 
of those who should come behind and after them, and 
had left well-feathered nests for the more helpless 
brood which might flock here in times long subsequent 
to their own. 

Eefreshed from the fatigues of this long wandering 
tramp, we then took a fresh start 304 years ago from 
Sainte Augustine, plodded on northwards forty-eight 
years ,to Jamestown, in six years more passed the little 
group of Dutch cabins on Manhattan island, and so, 
trending off eastward, followed the wavy coast for eight 



JULY FOURTH, 1776, AND SO FORTH. 



259 




260 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

years more, until we brought up, in 1620, at the newly 
erected temperance inn at Plymouth, where we halted, 
glad even of its scant and unpromising cheer. Very 
early after leaving the James, we were accosted by that 
well-known wag, John Smith, who turned up in high 
feather with Pocahontas, — the future mother of Vir- 
ginia, — and who keeps turning up and down every- 
where in all humors, moods, and tenses, — active, pas- 
sive, transitive, and intransitive, — to suit and amuse 
every taste. 

Mile-stone after mile-stone has been left behind 
us. "We have been hindered by Indian ambushes 
along the wayside, and have been "obliged often to 
pick out arrows shot into our covered emigrant-wagon, 
as we have toiled up and over the New England hills, 
through the Mohawk Valley, and along the broad 
bottom-lands of Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. 
Prench gentlemen with pleasant manners have often 
stopped us at cross-roads, and attempted by very sharp 
arguments to convince us that we were on the wrong 
track. Several large parties of these Gallic gentle- 
men, at various narrow parts of the way, especially in 
1689, 1710, 1745, and notably for nine consecutive 
years from 1754 to 1763, have warned us back, and in- 
deed endeavored to turn us entirely off the road, claim- 
ing that it was a private one of their own. But past 
all these have we succeeded in pushing our historic 
journey, shunning the miry places left open by colo- 
nial negligence, the shaky bridges full of witch holes, 
the badly mended ruts of religious bigotry, and the 
rough patches of corduroy posts, laid crosswise over 
trembling, low-lying swamps of political scheming and 



JULY FOURTH, 1776, AND SO FORTH. 261 

financial speculation. Here and there we have found 
bits of plank road, laboriously and ambitiously placed 
over the public highway in front of colleges, school- 
houses, churches, and occasionally through pleasant 
thrifty villages. 

Now and then we have ascended, after much patient 
up-hill work, to large, noble summits of civil or re- 
ligious freedom, commanding wide horizons and broad 
views ; but often, too, have we felt a sinking of spir- 
its, a saddening depression, as we have been compelled 
to descend to lower levels and to jog along again over 
wearisome flats. 

We have been detained occasionally by civil-spoken 
English governors and royal councillors, who have per- 
suaded us to alight and partake of their cheer, which, 
it must be admitted, was much better than that which 
we obtained along the common road ; but well know- 
ing that it had never been honestly paid for or justly 
earned, we should have found it more palatable had 
it been thus properly seasoned. Landed proprietors, 
with smooth, royal manners, have, also, sometimes 
stopped us to state little points of difference between 
themselves and their North American tenants. 

Several times have we crossed the Atlantic together 
for the purpose of obtaining certain information about 
the colonial ways, rights, manners, customs, and cos- 
tumes, which could only be cleared up by papers 
which had been either accidentally or carelessly left be- 
hind, when the first emigrants packed their chests with 
the prime necessaries for subsistence on their briny 
journey. As we returned and again resumed our land 
travels, we had only proceeded a short distance before 



262 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

we were stopped by unceremonious and hard-visaged 
European highwaymen, French, Dutch, and English, 
with whom we have had stout fights, to prevent the 
party which we were convoying from being captured, 
plundered, and carried off to foreign lands. But, thanks 
to a kind Providence and the strong arms and plucky 
vigor of the brave chaps inside the wagon, we have been 
able to disperse these banditti. Two of them, however, 
as we have just noted, escaping from those lesser en- 
counters, entered formally into a set contest with each 
other for the championship and custody of our his- 
torical party, — a contest which came off a few rods 
from the top of the hill, and which we halted to wit- 
ness. 

At last, however, we have reached the summit of 
the great pass, — the high beacon-point of American 
history, — where the sleepless, vigilant eagle sits 
screaming, while his strong, horny claws grasp the 
flag-staff, from whose top the flag of the married em- 
pires is anxiously ready, day and night, to slap in its 
saucy, quarrelsome face every wind that whispers a 
provocation. Here, on this elevated plateau, we come 
suddenly upon a very nice party of picturesquely 
dressed, intelligent, earnest, and thoughtful gentlemen, 
looking like a large gathering of state midwives, called 
together to consider a most important, impending 
family event. 

Let us take breath for a few moments after our 
long ascent, and look more carefully at this noteworthy 
group. It is the 4th of July, — always a very hot 
day ; and yet, although the weather is characteristic, 
and there is very wann work ahead, all the party — 



JULY FOURTH, 1776, AND SO FORTH. 263 

numbering that day fifty-one persons — seem, with 
few exceptions, to be very cool and unheated. They 
are quite unconcerned about the thunder-storm, sig- 
nalled by- white caps fringing the black heads which 
crowd the eastern horizon beyond the Atlantic, and 
which has shaken from its heavy locks leaden pow- 
der, which has sprinkled the exposed plantations. 
Breed's Hill, Concord, Lexington, Ticonderoga, Crown 
Point, and Long Island, and even shaken its disastrous 
dust upon Quebec and Montreal. 

This notable group is sometimes called the Second 
Continental Congress. Eemarkable in looks and marked 
men are nearly all of the persons there gathered, — 
remarkable for their average youth, as most of the 
members became equally famous for great age, — 
remarkable, too, in a majority of the whole number, 
for handsome features and intellectual presence, for 
their aptitude for, and ready proficiency in, the then 
very mysterious and royal business of statecraft, law- 
making, and army-raising, — for their thoughtful air 
and high-bred bearing, and their readiness in argument, 
logic, and knowledge of human rights and human na- 
ture ; marked by the heavy Hanoverian displeasure of 
George III., of the aristocratic Frederic, Lord North, 
his minister, and of Sir William Howe, his military 
generalissimo in the Colonies. Many of them, too, 
were marked by heads so peculiar that the three Eng- 
lish gentlemen just named became very desirous of 
having them to put into the English State Museum, 
and even went so far as to offer heavy sterling rewards 
for any one who would secure them. 
._„ One of these heads immediatelv arrests our nttcn- 



264 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

tion. It is very handsome, and is set upon a fine, tall, 
gentlemanly figure, — both owned by one John Han- 
cock from Boston, only thirty-nine years of age, of 
large wealth for those simple days honorably acquired 
by trade, of manners conspicuously high-bred, and with 
a soul that, like a lamp burning inside an alabaster 
vase, illuminates the beautiful characters which the 
highest culture has traced and wrought. Two years 
ago, when Boston was patiently biding the expected 
period of English justice, triumphing over a short- 
sighted selfishness, and was carrying, as best she might, 
meanwhile, the cruel burdens of the Boston Port Bill, 
and when General Gage was sent out to see that she 
did not cut the straps, shift the load, or escape its 
grievous weight, John Hancock, — who the evening 
before had rallied with soul-lifting eloquence his 
fellow-sufferers at Faneuil Hall to the unjustly imposed 
duty of throwing off the crushing load, — rode at the 
head of his Boston Cadets, to bear with restrained 
courtesy from the Long Wharf to the State House this 
hard plum from the royal enclosure, — a Gage that he 
was careful not to pluck, but to preserve until it was 
fully ripe. Among this group he sits on a raised seat, 
and acts as president. 

A few gentlemen, more advanced in years than the 
rest, are sjDrinkled through the company. One, an 
old acquaintance of ours, the boy who in 1721 fur- 
nished through the " New England Courant " such 
strong food for even Boston, and afterwards set up an 
intellectual bakery at Philadelphia, now seventy years 
old, rests his massive benevolent figure in a chair made 
comfortable by his presence, — his broad mild face, so 



JULY FOURTH, 1776, AND SO FORTH. 265 

largely serene, framed in hj flowing soft locks, and 
beaming with a placid composure, as if the plough- 
share of hard work had not turned a furrow there. He 
looks as if he could forgive George III. for his narrow 
notions, wedged inextricably fast in his narrow brain, 
and even his sallow, bilious, meadow-bottomed, Hano- 
verian dulness, dripping in pestilent, unhealthy oozings 
through his slow liver into his slower understanding. 
Well does the serenely fronted old sage know all the 
importance and the character of the business in hand. 
His clear, philosophic mind has weighed in its calm 
well-adjusted balances the questions now to be de- 
cided. He has but lately escaped from England, 
where, as agent for the Colonies, he was watched and 
treated by the government with incised and rigorous 
dislike ; yet, as a man and thinker, he was there wel- 
comed by the best men and most advanced statesmen. 
With Pitt, Camden, Burke, Charles James Fox, and 
even Lord North, he met, and with calm, compact, sensi- 
ble, logical eloquence discussed the nature of the prin- 
ciples, alike dangerous in England as in the Colonies, 
which the Ministry, in the name of the former, were 
seeking to fasten, as the shirt of Nessus, upon the lat- 
ter. While on his ungracious mission, he had, also, 
encountered that ponderous, fact-clad, political Goliath, 
Samuel Johnson, who had lately stepped forth in front 
of the ministerial Philistines, and defied any one to 
prove that taxation of a people unrepresented was 
tyranny. In that encounter, the American, armed 
only with a simple Quaker sling, planted in the giant's 
head a stone harder even than itself, and very uncom- 
fortable therein. Few now were Franklin's words ; but 
12 



266 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

eacli one weighed ten pounds, and though perhaps 
homely in shape and unrounded at the angles, when 
hurled out by an honest heart-force, they crashed resist- 
lessly through all the fences and thickets of sophis- 
try or learned show. 

Having to manage those two difficult problems in 
the political economy which then crowded up for solu- 
tion, namely, how to raise a revenue out of 2,800,000 
poor colonists, which, in weight, should put it in equi- 
poise with the heavy stacks of English pounds ster- 
ling ; and how to make 7,754 soldiers, constituting, 
as Washington liad that very morning reported from 
head-quarters, the entire colonial army, successfully 
oppose 28,000 English and 17,000 Hessian troops, 
this American Witenagemote had conscious need of all 
poor Eichard's solid, homespun sense and wise-headed 
prudence and resource. But the grand old man, who 
by virtuous kiting had obtained naturaEy lightning 
out of heaven by an easy discount, was equal to the 
task of drawing credit out of the well-soiled banks of 
his country. On a ring, circling his forefinger, and 
given him by an ardent friend, one may — by a near 
inspection, when the large head leans against his right 
hand — see carved that motto, which is his condensed 
biography, 

" Erii^uit coelo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis." 

A little way off stands a tall, scholarly figure, care- 
fully dressed in the gentlemanly costume of that time, 
a blue coat faced with yellow, a scarlet waistcoat para- 
graphing an elaborate shirt-frill, and black broadcloth 
tights, clasped at the knee, and, like his own round 



JULY FOUBTH, 1776, AND SO FORTH. 267 

periods, closed by polished silver-tongued buckles. He 
is thirty-one years old. His brick-colored hair and 
sanguine complexion betoken his ardent temperament. 
His. faultless dress and stainless linen betray a deli- 
cacy and refinement of culture and taste, in which he 
had few peers in his time on either side the Atlantic. 
This is Thomas Jefferson. Chairman of a committee 
to report on the question of the right of the Colonies 
to be hereafter independent of Great Britain, he holds 
in his womanly-shaped hands a large manuscript writ- 
ten in neat, careful characters. 

Close to him stands the short, firm, square, con- 
densed-looking figure of John Adams, coaxed into a 
well-ripened fulness. He is ten years older than Jef- 
ferson ; destined to be his generous rival through an 
eventful life, and to die only a few hours after him, just 
fifty years from that time, and on the semi-centennial 
anniversary of that very day. There is a good-natured 
frankness in his round, generously blooded face, and 
full- veined forehead ; great firmness in his well-jDressed 
lips ; and about his massive head a solid, intellectual 
strength that have already well earned for him the 
appellation of " the column of Congress." A hot pur- 
pose shows in his pink-heightening complexion, flush- 
ing it with an auroral light which plays and flashes up 
to the very zenith of his head. Faults he has, like his 
rival, grievous and many ; but among them is not that 
of being indifferent to his country or her freedom. 

A little way off sits one of the most accomplished 
orators in all that gifted group ; a genial companion you 
may see he is at a glance. He is a ripe scholar, edu- 
cated in an English university, and yet warm with a 



268 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

loving nature that glows on liis face and througli his 
graceful discourse. Wielding a ready pen, whose vigor- 
ous strokes have already, in the Memorial of Congress 
to British America, cleft the unwilling hearts of Cana- 
dians, and, in The Address of Congress to the People 
of Great Britain, have imbedded forever in the English 
Constitution the principles of representation as the 
basis of taxation, Eichard Henry Lee, from Soutli Caro- 
lina, three years older than Adams, sits there in cul- 
tured ease and thoughtful dignity, a model legislator. 
In the preceding month of June he had moved a reso- 
lution, asserting the rights of the Colonies to be free, 
and to dissolve in brine the ligaments which wickedly 
tied them to the money-making law manufactory at 
home. This resolution, having of course been well 
debated when it came up for consideration three days 
ago, — for American Congresses were never deaf or 
dumb asylums, — had been adopted, and upon it a 
committee raised, whose report, drawn by Jefferson, 
and revised by Frankliu and Adams, is to be read in 
to-day's session. 

A few feet away are Edward Rutledge of South 
Carolina, who, although only in his twenty-third sum- 
mer, is laden with the sheaves of a rich harvest of 
oratorical fame ; Charles Carroll of Maryland, who, an- 
nexing to the Declaration his address, so that he might 
not be passed by the state executioner for his treason, 
was spared by death to be the last of that memorable 
party on earth ; Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, who 
lived to fill acceptably every honorable office known to 
our system of government, except that of President ; 
and Robert R. Livingston of New York, who survived 



JULY FOURTH, 1776, AND SO FORTH. 269 

the recordership of the city of New York, and "became 
eminent, not only in many fields, bnt notably on the 
Hudson Eiver, in connection with Eobert Fulton's ef- 
forts to subject water to steam, — not one of them, 
except Carroll, yet thirty-three years of age. 

Leaning forward and near this last group stands the 
bulky figure of one who was for the first twenty-two 
years of his life a shoemaker; but who, disregarding 
the maxim of Horace " to stick to the last," left the 
lapstone to attend to the understandings of his suf- 
fering countrymen. This, all know, is Eoger Sherman 
of Connecticut, true to independence and well-grounded 
freedom — to the last. 

Across the room stand talking together George 
Wythe of Virginia, sweet-tempered, frolicsome as a 
boy, yet resolute of purpose, able in debate, and capa- 
ble of deep research ; Eobert Morris of Pennsylvania, 
born in England, an emigrant to Philadelphia in his 
thirteenth year, whose nature of sterling British oak, 
seasoned in the counting-house of Charles Willing, and 
whose solid aptitudes, hardened into financial wisdom, 
were now so much needed in the new political part- 
nership of States ; and Joseph Eeed from the same 
State, whose sturdy, honest face seems to light up a 
large space all around him, and whose rebuke two 
years later to the commissioner of Lord North, who 
sought to bribe him, that " poor as he was, the king of 
Great Britian was not rich enough to buy him," raised 
American securities as high in Europe as the practical 
answers of some of his congressional successors to 
similar attempts on their financial virtue by North or 
South, East or West, have depressed them. 



270 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Others there are among those twoscore and eleven 
whom we should be glad to delineate, as we dearly 
love to look at them gathered in the morning light of 
that first Fourth of July ; but there is such a serious, 
thoughtful air, such a felt pressure weighting all brows 
and hearts, that the loaded hour presses down and 
hushes all such light thoughts. A prayer so simple, 
earnest, child-like, and trusting, — uttered amid im- 
pressive silence by John Adams, — that it seems to 
bear the great question up to the Great Heart, hushes 
the assembly to a balanced calm, and opens the busi- 
ness. 

Large sealed packages from Washington, brought on 
horseback all the way from New York, are then read. 
They speak of his few men, — most of them without 
arms, clothing, or food, — in presence of 45,000 fresh 
and well-supj)lied English and German troops, under 
the command of Lord Howe, of his brother the Ad- 
miral, and of Sir Henry Clinton. Other letters were 
read from South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, and 
New York, urging the wise men to declare the old, un- 
equal partnership with England at an end, — a part- 
nership to which, they felt, that the colonial partners 
had furnished the capital and labor, and from which 
the English associates drew all the profits. 

In the name of the Profit, they virtually said, war. 
Then followed a pause in the proceedings, which at 
length the full, firm voice of John Adams broke. His 
speech, rising and rising like a freshet over that tall 
occasion, swept away by its resistless logical momen- ' 
tum the forces of sophism, carried in its strong hurry 
all the impediments to its march, brimmed over with 



JULY FOURTH, 1776, AND SO FORTH. 271 

its swelling forces the whole territory of debate, until 
at last, the gathered mass, hurled full against the 
barriers of prejudice, conservatism, doubt, and fear, 
prostrated forever the props and supports of British 
usurpation in the Colonies. It is a singular fact that 
no reporters were present to take down or even out- 
line this speech. Gathered up, however, from tradi- 
tion and memory by Daniel Webster, about half a cen- 
tury afterwards, it has floated and collected in almost 
every school-house and college, and there formed ed- 
dies, whirlpools, and geysers, which have sucked in 
and spouted out much gyrating declamation. 

Other speakers followed the fiery Adams, most urg- 
ing, a few deprecating, immediate action. We need 
not note here their range, fire, or effect. 

At last the patriotic battle abates ; and the com- 
mittee of five, — Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, 
and Li\angston, — forming around the tall, dignified, 
picturesque figure of their chairman, advance in front 
of the president's seat. There is an expectant, oppres- 
sive hush, a sudden settling back into seats ; and all 
eyes, like sunflowers, turn towards the scarlet-waist- 
coated son of the Eevolution. The neatly written pa- 
per is slowly unrolled, and its weighty truths, crowding 
up to its very rim, begin at once to discharge them- 
selves. 

That large electrical battery has been ever since at 
work, charging nationalities and peoples, galvanizing 
the feeble to effort, producing sparks whenever the 
current has been interrupted, recovering back to vital 
action sick communities, and arousing to better health 
from that hopeless despair which a long course of 



272 THE COMIC fflSTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

royal quack doctoring had produced, constitutions, sys- 
tems, or states originally strong, energetic, and vigorous. 
Without analyzing or dwelling upon the full, electrical 
streams then and there evolved by that American inde- 
pendence machine, we will only record here that two 
principal jets, namely, that of the equality of all in 
their creation, and the other, that all governments 
rest solely upon the consent of the governed, have 
poured upon paralyzed and crippled humanity such a 
current of blessings, that the old Asiatic, African, and 
European practices of blood-letting for liberal pleth- 
ora, drugs for congested rights, anodynes for con- 
sciences politically discontented, and cathartics for 
purging away healthy food necessary for civil nutri- 
tion, are fast becoming unpopular. 

George III. got a terrible peppering from that ma- 
chine ; but as he lived forty-four years afterwards, it is 
fair to presume that his royal, burly Hanoverian person, 
rolling over and over in bucolic clover, repaired with- 
out difficulty dents and shocks caused by applications 
administered at such a distance. For seven years fol- 
lowing he was in a great state of irritation, and worked 
hard to prevent the results with which that Declara- 
tion concluded, namely, a determination to cut all 
connection with him and his little island ways. 

How this great struggle, thus earnestly begun, was 
carried on, and its final issue, must be the office of 
future chapters to tell. 

That first Fourth caused a very gunpowdery smell 
throughout the Colonies for seven succeeding years, 
and has touched off more fire-crackers since than 
would fence in China with a wall higher than its 
present one. 



JULY FOURTH, 177G, AND SO FORTH. 273 

The lever then thrust beneath the corner-stone of 
civil right, to pry it out of its undisturbed imbedment 
into its appropriate place, was handled by ungloved 
hands ; but the anniversary of the event itself cannot 
be now handled by the municipal jollifiers in New 
York, Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, and even 
Chicago, with less than six paks of gloves each, while 
the very common councilmen sometimes get twelve 
pairs apiece for the. occasion. 

Blessings on all the Fourth of Julys up to 1850 ! 
What occasions for tar-barrel eloquence, going off into 
flaming tropes and figures, have they not been ! That 
has not only been " the birthday of freedom," but the 
natal initiation into civic or military renown of many 
a village tyro. The shoemaker, blacksmith, or carpen- 
ter, smothered for three hundred and sixty-four days 
under his own waxed ends, cindery veneering, or plane 
modesties, has suddenly, on that prolific day, been so 
brought out on a prancing horse, or caught such a gleam 
from his well-scoured sword, resting on his trusty thigh, 
or left to play loose between his crooked legs, as to 
aspire to be road-master, town-reeve, supervisor of the 
county, assemblyman, representative in Congress, and 
even United States senator. 

The civic honor of presiding at the old-time tradi- 
tional public dinner, which crowned, at the principal 
tavern, the militia morning cantering and inexpli- 
cable twistings of crooked military lines, — lines that 
snarled up until they broke past all sewing by waxed 
ends, welding by cindered hands, or splicing by plane 
people, — has again and again pipped the egg, else in- 
gloriously addling, which enclosed the rudimentary 

12* B 



274 THE COMIC HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

germ of a railroad president, it may be even, of a con- 
ductor with diamond pin, gold finger-ring, largely accu- 
mulating real estate, and all the other incidents. These 
glorious dinners have been, also, the nurseries of the 
legal profession, whose young members have thence 
sent up whizzing sky-rockets, which, mounting and 
mounting on the straining enthusiastic eye, have burst 
into such dissolving showers of golden glory, that, by 
the unexpected explosion, the national horizon and 
their own have been widened on all sides, and new 
stars been stuck into its astonished vault. 

We pity the American who has been born into our 
degenerating times, which neglect those primitive occa- 
sions of cheap yet great renown, when a little sulphur, 
administered to a rural population, went fiirther to 
cure all the scarlet fever of the neighborhood than all 
the colic-producing iron pills of actual war. We com- 
miserate the condition of the young American, grown 
so apoplectic ere he arrives of age, by the prodigal dis- 
play of bunting, fire-works, and red-faced oratory at 
our frequent elections, that he disdains the frugal but 
satisfying cakes of gingerbread, then bought with a 
well-pressed sixpence from the calico-roofed booth on 
the side of the bars, through which those undulating 
militia lines managed to unwind without hanging on 
the fence or getting into puzzling knots. 

Gone now are those molasses-plated cards of cake, 
pleasant to the taste on the Fourth, and sticking to the 
teeth, stomach, and memory of the patriotic eater for 
at least one fifty-second part of a year. Gone now 
are the pranks of horses bestridden by the colonel or 
major of the regiment, — his first equestrian perform- 



JULY FOURTH, 1776, AND SO FORTH. 275 

ance freely exhibited, and in whicli he showed feats, 
entirely his own, which could not, or at least would 
not, be displayed by first-class circuses or turf-bred 
racers, who, skimmed over in blue, yellow, or green, 
glide so stunningly through the admiring and open- 
ing air. Vanished now, alas ! are the groups of in- 
nocent children waiting for the show of animals, not 
those on parade, but the lively monkeys, the pie- 
colored horses, and the wonderful clown, whose pho- 
tographs, loading down the staggering fences, black- 
smith-shoj), horse-shed, and post-office for a whole long 
fortnight, were all so well known to them before the 
originals striped the village with their many-colored 
glories. 

Gone glimmering away from this green-backed epoch 
are the sable groups that danced on the greensward, 
away from the tangling military lines apparently just 
as happy as if the American Wittenagemote, led on 
by Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Sherman, and Living- 
ston, had not solemnly declared, and thereto pledged 
all that they had, " that all men are created free and 
equal." 



276 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




CHAPTEE III. 

SECOND TURN OF THE EEVOLUTIONARY WHEEL ; ITS 
ECCENTRIC BUT ONWARD MOVEMENTS. 

1776-1780. 

English Hawks gather around New York. — Washington watches them. — 
About an Esquire. — The Way the Germans took Brooklyn the first 
Time. — How they returned, not to their Mutton, but to Kalbfleisch. 
— Difficulty of reaching New York from Brooklyn in 1776. — Wash- 
ington takes a Trip to Harlem. — The British also. — Red Eyes and Dis- 
figured Faces the Consequence. — Lord Howe attempts to get around 
the American Squire. — The slight Unpleasantness at White Plains. — 
The different Uses of the Croton Water in 1776 and now. — The Amount 
of Whiskey it took in 1869 to qualify the Water in New York. — Wash- 
ington ventures into New Jersey. — Set-to at Fort Lee. — Washington 
across Rivers. — Philadelphia covered. — Homesickness of Agricul- 
tural Lads. — What befell Lee at a Tavern. — Washington crosses the 
Delaware and drops Christmas Presents into German Stockings. — The 
Effects of Yankee Doodle on Lafayette, De Kalb, Kosciusko, Pulaski, 
and others. — Friends of America in England, Fox, Hume, etc. — 
Friends of England in America. — The Statue and Statutes of George 
in. i-epealed. — Battle of Princeton. — The Germans obtain Cider and 
Sausages at Danbury. — Colonel Meigs tickles the Feet of Long Island, 
and makes Congress laugh. — Colonel Prescott is obliged to rise very 
early one Morning at Newport. — Silas Deane and B. Franklin in 
France. — What followed. — Burgoyne tries to find a back-stair Pas- 
sage to New York. — Strong Gates in his Way near Saratoga. — Still- 
Water runs deep. — Brandy-Wine an unpalatable Drink. — French 
Treaty with America in 1778. — The Wheel moves in Water and turns 
out French Names. — Crossing New Jersey, Loi-d Howe collides with 
Washington at Monmoi;th. — Count d'Estaing is prevented by an In- 
junction off" the New York Bar from entering New York. — Coquet- 
ting, but no Engagement, near Newport. — Buzzard's Bay and its 
Roosts. — Little Egg Harbor and its Nests, — what was laid there. — 
The Benefits of the Wyoming Massacre. — Guerilla War in the South. 



278 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

— Savannah trounced. — Horse-Neck and Putnam's Home-Stretch 
down it. — Count d'Estaing's Yachting. — Spain hankers for Gibraltar. 

— England as a Pawnbroker. — Paul Jones and his Whip. 

WHILE the wise men at Philadelphia were mak- 
ing the Fourth of July a precedent for the 
future by their very readable and taking Declaration 
of Independence, the English kites were gathering 
from the north, south, and east around New York. 
Lord Howe, from Halifax ; Sir Henry Clinton, from 
Charleston ; and Admiral Howe, from England, drawn 
together by focalizing orders, settled down with their 
separate flocks on Staten Island, — one of the lintels 
of the gateway to the metropolis, — numbering to- 
gether twenty-four thousand old hawks which had 
often whetted their beaks before in Spanish, German, 
and Dutch blood. 

Washington had about seventeen thousand agricul- 
tural lads, armed with every possible and impossible 
accoutrement, contrivance, and weapon, to watch the 
well-trained brood. Lord Howe, being a royal com- 
missioner as well as a general, understood letter-writ- 
ing well ; and liis first care was to pen an epistle to 
the American commander. Upon its composition he 
bestowed as much care as a young man upon his first 
letter to the coy damsel whom he would conciliate ; 
but upon the address he spent far greater pains. As 
despatched, it read " George Washington, Esquire." 
Carried to the General, he declined to receive it. 
Not that he was not an " Esq.," for all Americans are 
born such of course ; but being a Squire in a military 
court whose proceedings were likely to be recorded, he 
conceived himself to be entitled to different honors. 



SECOND TUEN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 279 

Defeated in his pen addresses, the British general 
tried another stroke. On the 22d of August, 1776, 
landing on Long Island, he commenced a march by 
three separate detachments towards Brooklyn, which, 
after a severe battle on the 27th of August, he took. 
It was the first invasion by the Germans of that 
quiet, pleasant, New York dormitory. Then the 
inhabitants took it very hard. Now, however, they 
have become so much accustomed to the German 
irruptions, that they have ceased to be astonished at 
their owti frequent captures. We may add that the 
Hessians did not at that time elect Herr Martin Kalb- 
fleisch mayor of Brooklyn. They waited nearly ninety 
years, and then returned, not to their mutton, but to 
their veal. 

The gathering in of one thousand dead and wounded 
from the Long Island hills w^as not the kind of har- 
vesting that the agricultural lads expected ; and as 
they had only engaged for a short job, many of them 
went back on the 28th to their own farms. Wash- 
ington not liking to be sandwiched with the rest of 
his forces, numbering some fourteen thousand, between 
Howe's Germans and the East Eiver, contrived dur- 
ing the misty night of the 29th of August to get over 
the river to New York, — an exploit much vaunted 
then among military men, but rendered very easy in 
our . time by the Union Ferry Company's boats. The 
country recruits who are now transported every Sun- 
day across the same river to Beecher's church, when 
there again transported, and after the service trans- 
ported back again, show what changes have occurred 
in the facilities for moving large bodies of men over 
the East Eiver since the battle of Long Island. 



280 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Howe's Hessians threatening to emigrate en masse 
to New York, General Washington, on the 10th of 
September, made room for them by taking his young 
army to the upper part of Manhattan Island, giving 
them an opportunity to see the rustic beauties of 
Harlem and the country around the present High 
Bridge. As it sometimes happens in war, as well as 
in peace, that different gentlemen take a fancy to the 
same piece of ground, whose possession and value are 
enhanced thereby. General Howe's desire to become 
possessed of the same real estate in the actual occu- 
pation of Washington, reached such a pitch that he 
sent a large party of military friends to seize it, even 
if by so doing they were obliged to dispossess its 
occupant. The friends of the Squire, however, re- 
sented this violent attempt so spiritedly that, as it has 
often fallen out since, the visitors to Harlem went 
back to 'New York with very red eyes and faces 
unkindly disfigured. 

Lord Howe next attempted to get around the Squire 
by sending a part of his force, now increased to thirty- 
five thousand men, into the lower district of West- 
chester to see how Harlem and the Continentals 
looked from the rear, and the other part on a lively 
' picnic up the Hudson Eiver ; but the wary leader 
of the Americans had seen, when surveying or hunt- 
ing in Virginia and Ohio, too many traps set by In- 
dians and white trappers to be caught between the 
steel jaws of this English one. So he pulled his men 
away from the cautiously planted contrivance and 
took them several miles to the northeast, on the Bronx 
Eiver. He allowed several of them, however, to go 



Wl 



SECOND TURN OF THE EEVOLUTIONAEY WHEEL. 281 

up to White Plains, where, to his chagrin, they were 
set upon by a large British party and very disagreea- 
bly handled. 

General Washington now scattered his force all 
along the Hudson Eiver from the city of New York 
up as high as Peekskill, his camp soups giving off a 
flavor into Anthony's nose. Some of the water used 
in cooking and drinking was dipped from the Croton 
Eiver. Thus early was the Croton put into American 
service. At that time, we may add, the fluid was 
employed to qualify and reduce the whiskey ; now the 
whiskey is thought to be weak enough to qualify and 
reduce the w^ater. Ninety-three years have thus 
united to furnish the same number of reasons as the 
composing elements, contrary as they may seem to 
each other, for mixing the fire and water. One may 
judge of the extent to which the Croton is now used 
from the fact that during 1868, the amount of liquors 
retailed at the opening throat of the aqueduct cost 
over $150,000,000. We need not add how, during 
all this period, fusil-oil went down. 

General Washington in November following ven- 
tured over into New Jersey, and, like so many from 
the New York side since, was having a good time at 
Fort Lee, when a body of Englishmen and Handeckers 
came down towards them in a very rough way, and 
the excursionists thought it prudent to retire, leaving 
their provender behind them. But for these little 
surprises, war would lose some of its briskest features. 
Washington was now compelled to retreat, with num- 
bers daily diminishing, before foes superior in num- 
bers and constantly augmenting as they pursued. In 



m 



282 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

fact, he was obliged to bridge or ford the principal 
rivers or streams in Northern New Jersey; thus furnish- 
ing the best precedent which the Camden and Amboy 
Railroad engineers have ever had for carrying people 
across New Jersey soil and waters in a bad temper. 
Newark, New Brunswick, and Princeton feU. into the 
hands of the enemy. Some people assert that they 
are in them still. 

December 8, 1776, Washington passed over the 
Delaware River to cover Philadelphia, which now 
had much need of a lid, for it was in a terrible stew. 
The country lads, as these reverses pressed upon them, 
took a homesickness which nothing but their mothers 
and their own homes could cure. Only about three 
thousand remained, shivering and tentless, and lying 
near the inhospitable track of the New York and 
Philadelphia Railroad. Lord CornwaUis but waited 
for a cold night to bridge over the Delaware to enable 
him to take the Squire and his dwindling posse of 
men. 

Trenton was the knife-balance of American fate. 
Upon a nicely poised point it swung tremblingly for 
a weary, anxious fortnight. 

General SuUivan, having succeeded the waspish 
Lee, who was one night captured at a tavern in Bask- 
ingridge by a party more spirit-ed than his own, led, 
through the gloomy days of mid-December, a force of 
four thousand men, provided with ammunition, across 
the country to Washington. Timely indeed w^as the 
reinforcement; for Washington, although just made 
by a Congressional decree supreme manager of the 
war, had more need of powder than power. 



SECOND TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 283 

Christmas eve, 1776, was a veiy jolly one in the 
British camp. Tlie commander, of&cers, and men, all 
thought that the American fiddle was broken and 
about to be hung up forever ; and so, in their Saxon 
and Teutonic joy, they hung up their stockings. 
The shrewd American Squire, borrowing old Santa 
Claus's coach and horses, and filling the former with 
bullets and powder, crossed the Delaware about mid- 
night and suddenly dropped his presents through the 
camp of his foreign visitors. Never were the Hessians 
so taken by Christmas gifts. In fact, fourteen hun- 
dred of them were so overcome by the novel presence 
of Washington, that they gave themselves up to 
American hospitality and followed their new friends 
across the river to their now merry quarters. 

The American fiddle w^as mended again; and its 
strains of Yankee Doodle were heard across the Atlan- 
tic by a young French marquis, only nineteen years of 
age, of a very old family, with a very young wife, and 
an income of $ 40,000 a year, — an income in those 
pre-Erie and pre-petroleum times highly respectable. 
Other Frenchmen also listened to, and, like Lafayette, 
were moved by, the touching airs of freedom, which 
passed the Ehine also, and were drunk in with his 
hock by the Prussian Steuben, a military martinet 
and schoolmaster, much needed in our militia school- 
house. The Baron was then generalissimo of his se- 
rene, discomposable highness, the Prince of Hohen- 
zoUern-Hechingen, whose magnificent titles would, if 
printed on a straight strip of paper, have easily reached 
across his principality ; but sounding as they were, 
they did not fill the ear of Steuben like the notes from 



284 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

that repaired fiddle. The lively adagio airs also struck 
upon the sensitive vibrating soul of De Kalb, a noble 
of Alsace, lifting it to highest impulses, which carried 
him through four years of patriotic service, and even 
bore him in lofty triumph across the death channel in 
1780, when at the battle of Camden he was carried 
away from the daring front, loaded with eleven bullets 
in various parts of his body. 

These same free airs fell upon those straight, up- 
right Poles, Kosciusko and Pulaski, and so vivifying 
them by warming heats, that through the whole war 
they bore most fragrant fruit, until at last they stood 
as that vintage so ripely planted in Mrs. Browning's 
verse, 

" Where the sun with a golden mouth doth blow 
Blue bubbles of grapes down a vineyard row," — 

the blue grapes of blistered steel. 

Even in England thousands of hearts warmed to 
the American cause. In Parliament, Charles James 
Fox, Earl Chatham, Edmund Burke, the virtuous Lord 
Camden, and others ; out of it, David Hume the histo- 
rian, Edward Gibbon, whose studies of the rise as well 
as the fall of Eome had led him down into the crypt 
of history, and countless able, learned, and good, others 
as true to state as to individual freedom, gave vent 
and weighty shape to the well-considered convictions 
of the injustice of the attempt to compel the Colonies 
to submit to impositions unassented to by themselves. 
But while in England there were advocates of colonial 
freedom, in the Colonies there were friends of Parlia- 
mentary oppression. These last were infiltrated more or 
less through all the United settlements ; but they gath- 



SECOND TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 285 

ered in notable volume in and about the then consid- 
erable village of New York, — numbering about 26,000 
inhabitants, — where all the vigilant zeal of Alexan- 
der Hamilton, an ardent, eloquent young lawyer, re- 
cently arrived from his native West Indies, the equally 
vigorous but cooler patriotism of John Jay, and the alert 
wisdom of other Sons of Liberty were needed, to make 
head against the Tory current whose momentum and 
velocity, quickened by wealth, social position, and offi- 
cial experience, swept with force and volumed power 
through the island city. Eude indeed was the shock 
given to the Manhattan loyalists by the overthrow in 
the Bowling Green of the leaden statue of George III., 
and the conversion of its characteristically heavy 
metal into lively Continental bullets. The popular 
repeal of this loyal statue was soon followed in Con- 
gress by the repeal of more important representatives 
of royalty, — leaden-typed statutes. 

The year 1777 opened with the battle of Princeton, 
fought under the leadership of Washington and Corn- 
wallis, whereby two hundred English and Germans were 
put under sodded trenches, to furnish in after times, in 
addition to their use in well-rounded school-boys' pe- 
riods, a special resort for the students of Nassau Hall, 
accompanied by such persuadable female companions 
— Dutch, American, English, or German — as might 
relish history studied under the advantageous lights 
of a pair of admiring eyes. 

In a few days after this battle, all New Jersey was 
cleared of British and Hessians, who dispersed in 
various directions, and sought to keep up their courage 
for several succeeding months by raids upon those 



286 THE COMIC HISTOEY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

peaceful, drowsy villages, Danbuiy in Connecticut, 
and Peekskill on the Hudson, and harrying off some 
of the delights of a German stomach, — winter apples, 
cider, and sausages. On the other hand, Colonel Meigs 
tickled the feet of Long Island one night in May, and 
touched up some British corns on its Sag Harbor toe, 
making even the grave Congress to laugh outright in 
a broad vote of thanks ; while Colonel Barton, early 
one morning in July, took, in spite of his guards, the 
British Major-General Prescott out of his bed, where 
he was cuddling up to escape the Ehode Island fogs, 
and bore him off through his own troops, and even 
through a large British fleet lying off the main-land, — 
a little surprise party highly relished by the visitors 
and their colonial friends. 

The arrival in France, in the autumn of 1776, of 
Silas Deane, a Connecticut delegate to Congress, and 
of Benjamin Franklin, as commissioners, soon raised 
the gates which had barred French supplies of men 
and means from flowing into the service of the Colo- 
nies. Louis XVI. and Vergennes, his Foreign Min- 
ister, had neither forgotten the great fight for the 
American belt, nor the wrench which French pride 
had suffered by the tossing of the prize, but fifteen 
years ago, into the eager hands of its uncivil rival. 
They were, therefore, more than ready to help the 
ward escape from her self-constituted guardian, and 
to send her secretly such instruments as would file 
off her bolts, cut away the prison-like fences around 
her suspiciously guarded dwelling-place, and enlarge 
her straitening liberties. They had even, in the spring 
of 1777, secretly encouraged, while pretending to pre- 



SECOND TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 287 

vent, the armed emigration of Lafayette and others to 
America. 

Just about the time that these French gentlemen, 
with Baron De Kalb, touched foot on American soil at 
Georgetown, South Carolina, an Englishman named 
Burgoyne, whose acquaintance we made at Bunker 
Hill, two years ago, came on shore at Quebec. Enter- 
ing the Colonies by that favorite back-stairs. Lake 
Champlain, he turned the well-known and well-worn 
knob, Ticonderoga, and got himself and his attendants 
fairly inside the American door-yard. Advancing, he 
came to a small place called Stillwater, where he 
tripped his toe over a little hillock, called a breast- 
work, raised by Kosciusko, aided by that crack rifleman, 
Morgan, and pitched forward faint and weak from this 
unexpected accident. Still, his English robustness of 
strength and pluck was such as to make him quite 
confident of being able to reach, without difficulty, the 
wing of the house, called Albany, and thence gaining 
access to its centre, New York, where he expected to 
meet Sir William Howe, and with him to succeed in 
bringing back once more the spirited young American 
heiress to the selfish love of her late champion. But 
quite to his surprise he discovered before him, near 
Saratoga Springs, Gates through which he must pass 
in order to make any progress, — Gates so strong that, 
unless he could force their Polish locks, their American 
hinges, and solid, iron-riveted timbers, he must perish 
for want of food. The Gates were not passed; and 
October 17, 1777, he gave himself up, with 5,791 offi- 
cers and men, and forty-six hundred muskets. Forty- 
two pieces of brass cannon also passed at that time to 



288 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

the Americans, — brass whicli gave them thenceforward 
more confidence and cheek. Much need, too, of it had 
they; for in the preceding two months, Washington, 
with thirteen thousand men, follomng Howe and Corn- 
wallis southward, with a body of eighteen thousand 
men under their command, met them a few miles south 
of Philadelphia, on a little, dispirited stream called 
the Brandywine, and there drank the disagreeable 
dregs of a defeat, made even more distasteful by the 
fact that it was the first American drink which Lafay- 
ette and Pulaski had an opportunity of sipping in this 
country. Exceedingly nauseated by this drink, they 
all took another draught October 4tli at Germantown ; 
but this decoction proved equally unpalatable. It re- 
quired all the beneficial effects of the Saratoga water 
to correct the disturbed action produced by the Brandy- 
wine and the Germantown potion. 

The fury of George III. at the close of the cam- 
paign of 1777 was perfectly Hanoverian. He had been 
led to expect the speedy submission of the Colonies ; 
but he had reluctantly discovered that early disasters 
had only stiffened the gristle of discontent into the 
bone of unconquerable resistance. His obstinacy, 
however, in prosecuting the war was met by equal 
firmness on the part of the Colonies in defending their 
rights. If, hke one of his predecessors, who, irritated 
by the resistance of Scotland to his royal wishes, 
threatened to make that country a royal hunting- 
ground, George III. threatened to make a shooting- 
park of North America, the colonists, in the spirit of 
the Scottish nobleman who, in reply to the menace, 
answered, " In that case, may it please your Majesty, I 



SECOND TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 289 

must be home to uncouple tlie hounds," were fully 
determined to muzzle the royal pack, and to increase 
their own war-dogs. 

Parliament, however, curbed by the strong arm of 
popular sentiment, found it best to hold in check the 
royal passion and resentment. It even slipped from 
the leash, not the savage bloodhounds of strife, but 
three very sleek-looking house-pets, called Peace Com- 
missioners, who came with nice little dainty titbits in 
their mouths, pardons and promises, to drop around 
the American door-yard. 

Too late ! — these royal poodles and King Charles 
spaniels. America had outgrown pets, petting, and 
even pantalettes. She had come of age, and dehber- 
ately made iip her mind to leave the uncomfortable 
homestead and to do for herself. She had a good 
friend in France, who encouraged her independent no- 
tions, and who, on the 6th of February, 1778, told 
everybody — England, America, and the other nations 
— that she was ready to stand by the plucky Colonies. 
This declaration, usually termed a treaty of alliance 
and commerce, was received with great joy by Amer- 
ica, and wdtli keen resentment by England. Eussia, 
always our friend from the first, clapped France on the 
back for her conduct, and the people of Europe, out 
of dislike to England, sided with the Colonies, and 
applauded their new friend. 

The old rivals, England and France, again scowled, 
flushed up, and clinched. 

During the rest of our Revolution French names 
are turned up by the wheel, which had so far run 
entirely on land, side by side with American. It was 
13 s 



290 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 

now at times to be put into water, and to dip its blades 
into an element which, troubled by navigation acts, 
had separated us from England, but which now, 
blessed by a treaty of amity, was to unite us to the 
country of Lafayette. 

At the opening of the crocuses, in the spring of 
1778, Lord Howe and his brother, the Admiral, were 
in die Quaker City, a city which, though mainly made 
up of the disciples of peace, wielded both pen and 
musket in favor of war for peace. A French fleet, 
commanded by Count d'Estaing, sailed from France 
to pen up in the Delaware the English brothers with 
their fleet and army ; but these some Howe getting at 
once wind of this intention and into their own sails, 
contrived to escape to New York. Part of the British 
forces took the land route to New York, courageously 
braving the dangers incident to New Jersey travelling. 
A little accident befell them on the route, June 28th, 
about eighteen miles south of Philadelphia, at a small 
place then called Monmouth, where, colliding with 
Washington and the artillery train of which he was 
conductor, they lost three hundred men. The Ameri- 
can loss was only seventy, — very trifling for a gen- 
uine American collision. It was in this battle that 
General Charles Lee became insubordinate, lost his 
reason, and was cast on the lee shore of patriotic duty, 
— a misfortune which, eighty -three years later, hap- 
pened to another general of the same name. 

The French fleet, finding on its arrival at Phila- 
delphia, that the Howes had gone to New York, 
followed suit thitherward ; but on reaching Sandy 
Hook, it was defeated in its intended action against 



SECOND TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 291 

them by an injunction raised by the New York bar, 
and so proceeded to that fashionable watering-place, 
Newport. Admiral Howe soon after took a notion to 
go to the same place, and, being reinforced by several 
ships, set out with his squadron. D'Estaing, inter- 
mitting his study of the " Eound Tower," " The Spout- 
ing Eock," and "The Dumplings," sailed out like a 
generous foe, to meet him half-way. The fleets, long 
in ogling sight, and loath to leave each other, were 
yet kept apart by those adverse winds and rough 
seas which sometimes in naval war, as in love, neither 
blow nor run smooth, and which, at least in this case, 
— as sometimes happens with lovers, — prevented an 
engagement. 

In September, General Clinton, who had superseded 
Lord Howe, sent out two marauding expeditions, one 
to Buzzard's Bay, which burnt seventy American ships 
roosting there on their anchors ; the other against 
Little Egg Harbor, which took a considerable amount 
of stores laid there, over which much British cackling 
was had. 

The massacre at Wyoming by Colonel John Butler 
and his Indian allies — only palliated by the plea that, 
w^hile it cruelly put out of existence some three hun- 
dred settlers, it called into being the beautiful " Ger- 
trude of Wyoming " — and the barbarities committed 
by another band of Tories and savages at Cherry Val- 
ley, raised the hair on. the head of many in Europe as 
well as in America. 

Towards the South the war now turns. The French 
and Enghsh fleets, having sailed for the West Indies, 
thus relieving Sir Henry Clinton of a natural anxiety 



292 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

about New York, lie despatched thence, in November 
of the same year, a force of two thousand men against 
Georgia. Savannah, just then preparing to receive 
her first bran-new city charter, and feeling like a boy 
who is promised his first pair of long pantaloons to 
cover his lengthening proportions, was taken in hand 
by Clinton's military schoolmaster and humiliated by 
a gentle spanking. Her sandy bottom, however, stood 
the trouncing well. She had the hardihood even to 
look right pleased and content when it was soon after 
told her that an expedition sent out against Port 
Eoyal, South Carolina, had been soundly ferruled. 

The year 1779 opened with, and shut upon, a lively 
guerrila war, carried on through Georgia and South 
Carolina by small bodies of troops, so light as almost 
to seem feathered, led by Moultrie, Pickens, and other 
partisan officers, who teased and worried the enemy 
by incessant scratches and irritating stings, especially 
annoying in the summer-time and amid a warm 
climate. 

At the North the British forces spent themselves on 
small excursions out of New York, veiy much as many 
j)eople stni do, and with the same result, — exhausting 
their own means and boring the peoj)le up the Somid 
and Hudson Eiver. On one of these excursions under 
Governor Tryon, an attack by fifteen hundred men 
was made in March, 1779, upon Horse-Neck, one of 
Putnam's outposts, a high, steep hill defended by one 
hundred and fifty men and two old rusty field-pieces. 
The powder failing, these loud-talking mouthpieces of 
the little party were almost silenced, when a cavalry 
charge was ordered upon the small band at the top of 



SECOND TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 



293 




Putnam's Home-Stketch down 



294 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

the hill. Putnam's troops were directed to withdraw 
behind a morass inaccessible to cavalry, when Put- 
nam himself, staying behind to serve the hard old 
swivels with the few grains of powder freshly discov- 
ered, and, finding himself closely pressed by assailants, 
leaped upon his horse and launched himself down the 
precipitous ledge amid a tempest of bullets and stones. 
It was neck or nothing ; and he won by a neck, — 
his own, — which, had the horse given out, would 
probably have been stretched. 

In September "of this year Count d'Estaing returned 
from the West Indies with his fleet ; and having in 
vain tried to recapture Savannah, took French leave of 
it and of America, having had a yachting trip in 
American waters with the usual yachting experience, 
— a good deal of getting up, a deal of getting down, 
large consumption of provisions and liquors, high 
hopes in idle state-rooms, and low performances on 
deck. 

Spain, now conceiving a violent taste for Gibraltar, 
Jamaica, and the two Ploridas, — for the taking of 
which by England aforetime she was of course very 
critical upon Albion, — seized the opportunity of 
Britain's multiplying engagements with America and 
France, to let her know that she desired an immediate 
return of these forced loans. England of course in- 
sisted that, if she was an international pawnbroker, 
she was not obliged to surrender articles taken in 
until she chose to give them up, or until payment was 
made with shot and shell. She resented and resisted 
the demand ; resisted it when Spain stepped up to 
her coast with a large fleet, resisted it successfully for 



SECOND TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 295 

three years at the Gibraltar Eock itself, and resisted it 
wherever Spanish gentlemen appeared to assert it, 
either on sea or land. 

Meanwhile, on the 23d of September, 1779, Paul 
Jones, a Scotchman by birth, and who, like his apos- 
tolic namesake, had been " in shipwrecks often " and 
" in perils in the sea," the first who ever displayed 
the American flag, now sailing the good ship " Bon 
Homme Eichard," — an old Indiaman converted into 
a war vessel, — after capturing with this old lugger 
twenty-three merchantmen, at last fell in with two 
heavy English frigates. Lashing his own ship to the 
larger one, he so laid on other strings that at the end 
of two hours he had thoroughly whipped both, — a 
whipping whose stinging recollections brought the 
color for a long time into even the ruddy cheek of Mr. 
BuU. 



CHAPTEE IV. 

THE LAST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY "WHEEL; AC- 
CELERATIONS ; SLOWINGS ; THE GRIST. 

1780-1783. 

The difTerent Opening of 1780 for those who pushed and those who ob- 
structed the Revolutionary Wheel. — The Strain on both Sides. — 
Hard Spring in Charleston in Consequence of Leaden Hail-Storms. — 
How these Storms spread ; and how the Crops were saved from Ruin 
by Marion, Sumter, and Pickens. — The Carolina Game-Cock, and 
his sharp Spurs in the Sides of Cornwallis and Tarleton. — Gates broken 
down, and the Presidency lost at Camden. — Greene set up in his 
Place, proving a good standing Color. — The Village of St. Louis as- 
sailed. — Andrd humiliates himself, and is exalted. — Arnold gets 
$ 50,000, a Brigadier's Commission, and is elected by General Contempt 
into the Order of Judas Iscariot. — New- Year's Day among the Penn- 
sylvania Troops at Morristown. — The United States Treasury, made 
less Celestial, becomes defiled by filthy Lucre. — The Goring and 
Tossing of Tarleton by Morgan at the Cow-Pens. — An Irish-like Fight 
at Eutaw Springs. — Southern Hunters around the British Flock at 
Charleston and Savannah. — The troublesome Seizui-e of Virginia As- 
semblymen. — How the Captors missed burning their Fingers with 
Jefferson's red Hair. — Cornwallis enmeshed at Yorktown. — What 
Lord North said. — What the English George threatened and what the 
American George did. — "Let there be Peace"; and Peace was. — 
What England lost and America gained. — The kmd of Grist ob- 
tained. 

THE military revolutionary wheel had now been 
revolving nearly five years. Seventeen Hun- 
dred and Eighty began with very different prospects 
for the promoters and opposers of its, operations. The 
former were poor, their workmen wretchedly clothed, 



LAST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 297 

badly fed, discontented with the small pay promised, 
and often threatening to strike because that pay was 
only irregularly and partially paid, and, when given, 
only afforded in depreciated and depreciating new paper 
promises. The latter, on the contrary, with that obsti- 
nacy which sinks deeper and rises higher with the 
rising tide of opposition, and j)ossessed of resources 
to match this dogged jiride, made larger preparations 
to open the coming campaign. Parliament voted to 
add to its colonial army one hundred and twenty 
thousand men, and wrought up the sinews to carry 
this then enormous live weight to twenty million 
sterling pounds. 

It was a hard spring in Charleston ; for it hailed 
heavy iron hail-stones from Sir Henry Clinton's bat- 
teries, from April 1 to May 12, 1780, when the city 
became so riddled that it gave up. The storm soon 
spread, bursting over tlie entire States of North and 
South Carolina, and beating down for a time, as with 
iron flails, the growing harvest of patriotism. A good 
part of the crop was, however, finally saved during the 
late summer, by Marion, Pickens, and Sumter, who, 
with their sturdy little bands of reapers, toiled all 
through the blinding storms with high spirits, and 
without pay. Sumter was well called " The Carolina 
Game-cock " ; for he often drove his sharp spurs into 
Corwallis and Tarleton, and roused a very cheery feel- 
ing by his crows through those gray mornings of lib- 
erty. 

Gates, who had so successfully administered Sara- 
toga water to Burgoyne and his men three years be- 
fore, was despatched in haste to look after the obstinate 
13* 



298 THE COMIC HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES, 

and severe cases of Clinton, Eawdon, and Cornwallis 
in South Carolina ; but, as it often happens, the remedies 
successfully applied to one patient often fail with an- 
other. At Camden — a name which should have been 
propitious to American arms — the army of Gates was 
seized by that frightful epidemic, a panic; and ran 
away, carrying off with them their general's sole chance 
for the next Presidency. 

Nathaniel Greene, a Ehode Island Quaker, — the 
ungloved right hand of Washington, who had served 
in the army with brilliant and yet solid success since 
June, 1775, — succeeded the unsuccessful Gates in 
August, 1780 ; but the heats of summer melted out all 
serious campaign attempts on either side, through the 
South, during that season. 

St. Louis, then a village sixteen years old with nine 
hundred and sixty inhabitants, exalted above the dirty 
Mississippi on two terraces, or a double platform of 
earth, was assailed by some Englishmen and Indians 
from Michilimackinac, — as it has often been since, 
by people of all nations ; but on this first invasion 
the invaders were as glad to get away as their succes- 
sors have been to stay. 

Meanwliile General Greene was detailed to act as 
president of the court of inquiry upon Major Andrd, 
that historical romance of our war, as Mary Queen of 
Scots is the sentiment of the tough annals of Scotland. 
This handsome, romantic, cultivated, and high-bred 
Englishman, then in his twenty-ninth year, who had 
imsuccessfully courted in Ireland the future mother of 
Maria Edgeworth, the novelist, and then won a better 
fortune from the golden hands of trade, had afterwards 



LAST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 299 

flung himself into the stern arms of war. Lowering 
himself to the mean business of carrying dangerous, 
sealed secrets in his boots, outside the mails, contrary 
to all laws, and caught in the act by three militia- 
men, wdio, after playing cards with each other, played a 
sharper and more patriotic game with him, he was 
most disagreeably elevated to the rank of a spy, and 
sent in consequence to find out the great secret on a 
very lonesome journey. 

His principal, Benedict Arnold, — who had suffered 
the canker of excessive extravagance to eat through 
his brave and well-shredded military coat, — escaping 
from our dangling line into the English straighter 
ones, received fifty thousand dollars and a brigadier- 
general's commission. He w^as subsequently elected 
by General Contempt into the celebrated order of 
Judas Iscariot. 

The campaign of 1781 was inaugurated New- Year's 
day by a good-natured and semi-patriotic insurrection 
among the Pennsylvanian troops stationed at Morris- 
town, New Jersey ; not on account of the Jersey 
ways, usually deemed so hostile to foreigners, but 
by reason of the scant fare, clothing, and pocket- 
money to which they were reduced. Marching to 
Princeton, they were met by emissaries from General 
Clinton, with large offers of bounty-money to enlist 
for King George ; but the noble-minded troops, spurn- 
ing these attempts upon their virtue, delivered up 
these agents, as spies, to General Wayne. A com- 
mittee from Congress relieved the just needs of the 
insurgents, and offered them rewards for their patriotic 
treatment of the spies ; but they refused to accept pay 
for what, they truly asserted, was but their duty. 



300 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

With such metal were the new moulds of American 
life filling up. By such iron hands was the Eevolu- 
tionary wheel made strong and irreversible. 

The attention of Congress was now seriously and 
effectively drawn to the condition of the army, — the 
crank of the wheel. Eobert Morris was appointed 
Superintendent of the Treasury ; and the treasury — 
till then a very celestial affair, undefiled by filthy lucre, 
and having out-goes in the place of in-gots — was tol- 
erably supplied by taxation at home and loans abroad. 

Again the scenes of the war lie south of Baltimore. 
At the Cowpens, in South Carolina, Colonel Tarleton 
was caught on the horns of Morgan, three hundred of 
his men tossed fatally, and the rest, with their leader, 
severely gored and gashed. Cornwallis soon found that 
the Southern commander was not a Greenehorn. At 
Guilford Court-House, the English leader, with a supe- 
rior force, met the American general, with 4,500 men, 
and after a severe grapple, fell back with the air and con- 
viction of a man disagreeably undeceived. The Ameri- 
cans now seemed to have received an ally in general 
success ; for in April, May, and June they retook, one 
after another, all the forts, outposts, cities, and military 
points occupied by Lord Eawdon. On the Catawba, 
Morgan gave to Tarleton a little more grape, which 
sent his lines reeling backwards in awkward confu- 
sion towards the main body. 

As soon as Sej)tember began to cool the air and 
make travelling tolerable in a warm climate, General 
Greene, with an American party, and Colonel Stewart, 
with an, English company, took it into their heads mu- 
tually to visit Eutaw Springs, about fifty miles west of 



LAST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 301 

Charleston. The meeting was unusually lively ; in fact, 
quite an Irish gathering. Like most Irish fights, too, 
it was impossible to say, which had the worst of it. 
Both sides held a funeral wake over about three hun- 
dred killed, and claimed the fewest graves and victory. 

After this affair, the British flock, which had been 
scattered more or less over the two Carolinas and 
Georgia, gathered back and alighted for a long time on 
two favorite spots, Charleston and Savannah. Near 
them gradually collected ready American hunters and 
fowlers, fond of foreign game, vigilant in watching and 
very desirous of bagging the entire lot. 

Meanwhile, Cornwallis had advanced northward 
through North Carolina into Virginia, where the young 
French marquis — more fortunate than the almost 
useless French fleets, first under D'Estaing, and after- 
wards under Admiral De Ternay — was doing good 
service. The route of Cornwallis was nearly along the 
present track of the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, 
which fortunately for him was not then in existence, 
to invite him to use its delaying time-tables and dan- 
gerous rails. As it was, he reached Petersburg in the 
course of time, and in safety. 

A detachment sent to Charlottesville, where the 
Legislature of Virginia was in session, seized several 
of those most unmanageable specimens of the human 
race, members of assembly, troublesome enough when 
let alone, but as prisoners wholly incapable of defini- 
tion, exchange, or valuation. The squad came near 
burning their fingers by taking the red-haired and red- 
vested Jefferson, whose term as Governor had expired 
only two days before, but around whose head there yet 



302 THE COMIC HI-STORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

lingered enough of the aureola of official dignity to 
make him worth several cart-loads of assemblymen. 

For Cornwallis himself the three military fates — 
Washington, Eochambeau, and Lafayette — were se- 
curely and steadily spinning lines for his entanglement. 
At last they enmeshed him at Yorktown. Nine thou- 
sand Americans and seven thousand Frenchmen held 
the netting which, gathered in fold after fold, finally, 
October 19, 1781, caught the whole shoal, — Corn- 
wallis, that voracious old pike which had devoured 
scores of American armored fish, and 7,000 others. 
In this splendid haul were found 235 cannon, 8,000 
small arms, and regimental colors enough to supply all 
the state-houses for the next sixty-five years. 

When Lord George Germain hastened Avith the dis- 
agreeable and accelerating news to Lord North, the 
premier raised his hands wildly in the air, and ex- 
claimed, with an oath too big to fit our Comic History, 
" It is all over." 

For the first time, during the last six years. Lord 
North was right. 

George III. stormed loudly, and, at a hint that 
American independence must follow, threatened to 
freight a large boat with his ponderous heaviness, and 
be transported to Hanover ; but he soon concluded to 
take another bucolic roll in the rich English clover, 
and to postpone turning himself out into the thin graz- 
ing lands along the Weser. 

The American George rejoiced with temperate joy, 
thanked God for the crowning mercy, ordered divine 
service to be performed throughout the camps, and 
thanksgiving turkeys to be rendered to, and thanks- 



LAST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 303 

giving by, the troops. And so ended 1781, as all years 
should end, with thanksgiving and turkey. 

Christmas dinners, or something else in America, 
had the effect of turning the English stomach against 
the war ministry of Lord North. " Let us have peace," 
piped the Enghsh House of Commons to the watch on 
the deck of the still fine, but somewhat battered, Eoyal 
George. " Ay ! ay ! " responded the first mate. So 
the ship was hove to, and a gentleman stepped down 
the ladder let down her sides, was rowed to the French 
shore, and at Paris met four American ex-rebels, — 
Adams, Franklin, Jay, and Henry Laurens. 

These five gentlemen, on the 30th of November, 
1782, sitting at a round table covered with green baize, 
signed a preliminary agreement for peace, which was 
joyfully attested by many millions of witnesses. 

This agreement was dressed up with new ribbons 
ten months after, and then became a fixed, resolute 
treaty, — a gay, laughing, sunny break in our history, 
— but in the English chronicles a flinty, hard, jagged 
fact, against which the waves of national pride long 
broke sullenly and hoarsely. England had sent one 
hundred and twelve thousand five hundred and eighty 
four soldiers and twenty-two thousand seamen to this 
unjust, successless war ; had lost many thousands out 
of their ranks ; had lost much solid, precious money ; 
lost credit and honor, more precious still; and now 
at last lost the colonial empires themselves. 

She had thus millions of reasons for not being 
jolly 

The Eevolutionary wheel, which had begun to slow 
after the battle of Yorktown, now of course wholly 



304 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




'hv lli>'^--/nij. 



LAST TURN OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WHEEL. 305 

stopped. The grist was ground. In it, it is true, 
were some hard colonels, some badly ground, dyspeptical 
grains, some dark specks ; but, on the whole, the yield 
was good, unbolted American family flour. Of course 
the miller took toll. This came out in the shape of 
debts for soldiers' wages, for money borrowed, for 
stores used, powder exploded, and pensions in the near 
distance ; but still there was a broad country to gather 
it from, reaching westward to the Mississippi, north- 
ward to the Lakes, southward to the Gulf and Florida, 
and eastward to the Atlantic. There were indepen- 
dence achieved by obstinate bravery, right of govern- 
ment, right to tax one's self, and, above all, the right 
to spend one's own taxes, even on useless officials and 
handsomely printed laws. And so, on the whole, the 
customer was well satisfied with his large, healthy, 
unbolted grist. 



CHAPTER V. 

HOW A POOR CONSTITUTION BROKE DOWN. 

Every Community has its Axis of Growth. — That of the Confederation 
described. — Causes of the Distrust of Federated Power. — How the 
States preferred to sew up the Treasury Pocket rather than allow 
their own Agents to put their Hands in it for necessary Funds. — Face- 
tious Bills of Exchange. — The Shady and Sunny Side of Power. — 
Similarities and Dissimilarities of the States. — The Committee to 
draft Confederation Sixteen Months over the Cold Nest. — The curious 
Knot-ty Grub that issued. — The Spawn of Doubt put to the Nurse of 
Jealousy. — How it was nursed, starved, and doctored; and what a 
poor Constitution it got. — The Confederate Scheme like a Pine Board. 
— It could not raise Money, an Army, Credit, Postage, Revenue : in 
fact, could not raise itself. — The Comic Side of the Franking Privi- 
lege. — A desirable Prohibition. — How the Grub became a Cater- 
pillar, and the Catei-pillar a Butterfly. — A very Larky Phoenix rises, 
crowing Yankee Doodle. 

EVERY community, like every individual, has its 
axis of growth. Sometimes this axis is in the 
line of large, generous expansion, loving, trustful, and 
unselfish ; sometimes on the crooked wire of involved, 
self-stunting contradictions, of twisting jealousies, and 
of resolutely resistant forces, which project crabwise 
on all sides, and propel with counteracting momen- 
tum in all directions, and so sprawl out either in bal- 
ancing rest or in a slight gain rearward. 

Of these latter stationary or retrograde and always 
negative qualities, the Confederation largely partook. 
The committee, appointed by Congress, June 11, 1776, 
to draft a plan for governing the thirteen Colonies, 



HOW A POOR CONSTITUTION BROKE DOWN. 307 

shared in the feeling, indulged by the people at large, 
of apprehension as to the natural driftage of central 
power athwart popular rights. They, like their con- 
stituents, were very subject, to that political fever and 
ague, a shivering, chilly dread that an American par- 
liament might grasp and abuse the power of taxation 
as the English congress had done, and a heated, burn- 
ing fever whenever the possibility of legislation in 
matters of religious faith was started in any vein. 
Denying the power of King George, George Gren- 
ville, or any other George, to put his hand in their 
pockets, they thought it logical — and it was the 
natural logic of distrust — to refuse permission even to 
their own agents, although frequently elected and called 
to account by themselves, to agree upon any plan of 
mutual contribution for the common good. Smarting 
under wrongs inflicted in the name of government, 
our confederated progenitors were never able to gain 
political faith and strength enough to crawl out from 
under the shady side of authority around to its sunny, 
cheery, beneficent face. 

The needs for a Union were yet unfelt. All the 
thirteen Colonies held slaves, all sloped to the At- 
lantic, and all, except Pennsylvania, touched the sea. 
Their substantial agreements created as yet no wants ; 
their broad areas made them independent ; their slight 
diversities were not so strong as to require the firm 
hand of central power to bind them within a well- 
hooped circle, within which aggressive rights might be 
so restrained as not to become antagonistically hostile, 
and which might yet continue so free that their forces 
might work together and onward in large and enlarg- 
ing action. 



308 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The Committee sat for sixteen montlis ; and in No- 
vember, 1777, the lumpish, inert grub of Confederation 
saw the hght. A poor, weak grub it was, without 
developed legs to go on, without eyes to see with, 
filmed over with a gelatinous, swatliing membrane, 
squirming in feeble inanition, and feeling as cold as a 
tax-bill, or the shake of a cashier's hand with a doubt- 
ful bank customer on discount day. 

The scheme of Confederation was the cliild of Doubt, 
put out to the nurse of Jealousy. 

It was watched to death by the members of the 
State family, each taking its turn, and each well pro- 
vided with the cold-gruel theory, that what the child 
cried for was not good for it, and that what it really 
and always wanted was a sound course of starvation. 
And so starvation it got, with an occasional blue-piU 
administered by those little teasing children, Maryland, 
Ehode Island, and Connecticut, whose jealous preten- 
sions were of course inversely to their size. No wonder 
that the brat grew pale. 

In a word, the States were everything, the Confeder- 
ation nothing. The powers of the latter were, like 
poor pine boards, filled with nets. The Confederation 
could not, of itself, levy taxes ; it could only cipher 
up what each State ought to pay, and then advise it to 
pay the sum stated. It could not raise an army ; and, 
amid the extra jealousy against a military force, it was 
hardly suffered to figure out the quotas of the various 
States which might, if they saw fit, follow the advice, 
or might, if they chose, disregard it. Of course the 
States generally treated these debiting bills as any 
customer would a draft upon liim, when accompanied 



HOW A POOR CONSTITUTION BROKE DOWN. 309 

by an intimation that, although payment was desirable 
to the writer, he, the correspondent, might pay or not, 
as and when he found it convenient. Without trem- 
bling as Felix did, they adopted the Eoman governor's 
mode of dealing with unpalatable advice, — thoughts 
and suggestions of a judgment to come being post- 
poned to a time which, rainbow-like, never touched 
them. The Confederation had no power over exports 
or imports, or the revenue therefrom ; the States sit- 
ting along the sea-shore, keeping each its own straw to 
suck its private fill from the large maritime bowl in 
front of it. It had no authority to punish treason, 
as the States considered it no crime to hurt or maltreat 
the poor manikin which they had set up. 

It could not even collect more postage on letters 
than was barely necessary to defray the expenses of 
carrying the mails. As for the franking privilege, 
that curious Congressional le'vy on the public treasury, 
comically supposed to be repaid to the people by heavy 
speeches, very uncurrent and untransportable, which 
require all the gcverr/Jierxt levers to lift them up to 
the unwilling hands of tlieir constituents, till? p^i^ir 
lege was as yet undiscovered. 

There was one prohibition which might, in our time, 
with great advantage to the public interests, be even 
extended ; the interdict upon men going to Congress 
more than three years out of six. Even the three 
years might be profitably prohibited, — an economy of 
bad laws, bad speeches, bad manners, and of $1,635,000 
annually paid for salaries. 

It is noteworthy, however, that among the stark cold 
negations of the Confederation act, there were two 



310 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

warm affirmative provisions, one securing to persons 
of every color equal rights in all the States, the other 
making each man's conscience the teacher and judge 
of his religious belief. These were the two red cur- 
rents, the arterial blood, which kept alive the lumpish, 
footless, armless, and eyeless grub, and preserved it 
during the Eevolution, and through the caterpillar, 
chrysalis condition from 1783 to 1787, until at last, in 
the latter year, it burst forth into the glad, beautiful, 
perfected butterfly, the Constitution, vital with sus- 
taining power, bright with yellow promises, and rising 
joyously into the large air of healthy freedom. 

The phoenix of the Confederation, that arose out of 
its ashy bed very larky and lustily crowing Yankee 
DoodlCj was oui" present Constitution. 



BOOK FOURTH 

THE UNITED STATES. 
1789 TO 1869 AND ONWARDS. 



" Virtutes ibi esse debebunt, ubi consensus 
Atque Unitas erit." 

Sen. de lit. Beat. c. 8. 

" He stood 
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies." 

Milton. 

" Whose genius was such 
We scarcely can praise it or blame it too-much." 

Goldsmith. 



CHAPTEE I. 

THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 

1777-1787. 

The Constitution as a Resort for Shoppers in Civil Rights. — Every Kind 
of Article to be found either for Ordinary or Exceptional Use. — The 
Fringe called Preamble ; its Thread, Texture, and Quality. — Counter- 
feit Patterns and Simulations easily detected. — Piles of heavy Cloths 
for the Country's Winter Use in War, Financial Storms, etc. — Ex- 
ecutive and Legislative Ready-made Clothing. — Judicial White Goods. 
— Hosiery for Congressional Understandings, swift or slow. — A Variety 
of Miscellaneous Wai-es; Contrivances for catching People with Colored 
Skins; Habeas Corpus Non-Suspenders; Muzzles for violent or hungry 
Congressmen ; Handsome Checks on the Treasury ; Specimens of tender 
Gold and Silver; Militia Uniforms ; Padlocks for securing Houses 
against Searches ; Juiy-Boxes, Trial Balances, and other Goods. — The 
Sumner Patent. — The latest Novelty to prevent Electoral Black-and- 
White Suits from being stripped otf. — State-Rights Dresses, and strong 
Federal Out-Fits. — Messrs. Calhoun, J. Davis, Webster, Clay, etc. — 
The Manufacture of bright Buttons, called "Coins." — The Fifteenth 
Amendment. — Doubtful Packages. — Paper Money as a Substitute for 
real Money. — Unauthorized Use of the Constitutional Bazaar. — 
Seekers of Goods never made. — Nicholas Biddle and his Gold Suit. — 
Everybody suited at the Federal Store. — Of excessively sharp and 
dense-headed Shoppers. — How Articles are mistaken. — Water-proof 
Goods for River and Harbor Dredging and for Lighting Coasts. — Of 
long Selvedges, or Railroad Strips, and their wonderful Elasticity. — 
Rights and Lefts. 

WHAT Stewart's New York emporium is to shop- 
pers for goods, the Constitution of the United 
States is to shoppers for civil and political rights. 
There one may find whatever he is in quest of, and 
may very often see things, beautiful in texture, color, 
14 



314 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 








The State takes leaae of the Colony. 



and quality, which he would never require, even if he 
lived as long as his long-winded ancestor Methuselah. 
On his very first entrance, he will stop to look at that 
very handsome fringe, " the preamble," woven together 
in such exquisite tissue-work. As he examines it, he 
will note the quality of the material, the even strands 
" more perfect union," "justice," "domestic tranquil- 
lity," " common defence" " general welfare," " blessings 
of liberty," braided together by the deft, expert, and 
strong fingers of the people of the United States " for 
themselves " and " their posterity," — a bit of domestic 
hand-weavinw which has now lasted over fourscore 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 315 

years, and is still bright in color, and, although much 
liandled and tumbled about, just as good as new. Pat- 
terns have been taken from it, and cheap imitations at- 
tempted ; but these latter are just as easy of detection 
as cottonized linen, dyed hair, or carminized blushes. 

There, too, one finds readily and in abundance heavy 
cloths for the country's wear through the wintry storms 
of financial distress, foreign wars, or domestic insurrec- 
tion ; ready-made clothing for legislative and execu- 
tive use ; white linen goods for the judges, as stainless 
as snow, although not quite as cheap ; a great variety 
of under-garments to fit the powers of Congress, and a 
large assortment of hosiery to encase with restrictive 
woof its rapid understandings. 

As one advances, he finds a miscellaneous collection 
of rights ; patent contrivances to give people in one 
State the same expansion, weight, and solidity as in 
another ; admirably adjusted devices for catching per- 
sons with colored skins, when attempting to run off 
with them over boundary lines, — a device ingenious- 
ly stamped " labor-saving machines," — an article in 
great demand between 1850 and 1861 in the southern 
portion of the Union. On the same counter lie habeas 
corpus non-suspenders, a strap occasionally called for 
by passionate judges and choleric magistrates ; tacks, 
which can only be driven in all over the surface of 
America up to the same point ; muzzles over legis- 
lative bills and hungry congressmen,, to prevent them 
from pecking at the estates of people politically de- 
capitated, and from whetting up the keen edge of ex 
post facto laws ; handsome checks on the treasury ; 
good bills of lading, current in all the ports of the 



316 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Union, if at any time introduced in any one of them ; 
specimens of gold and silver, made very tender in all 
the States, especially during a time of plenty, and be- 
fore a war ; and a large variety of odd gear, to prevent 
people from getting into, or, if in, out of, trouble. 

Proceeding to the rear of our Constitutional bazaar, 
the shopper will find the very latest styles and modes 
of civil rights ; pieces adapted to dress and re-dress 
pulpits and printing-presses ; militia uniforms ; arms 
without quarterings ; padlocks to secure houses from 
being entered and searched ; devices to keep property 
from being taken for public use without proper pay- 
ment ; jury-boxes and trial balances. 

But the very latest article added to this great empo- 
rium is a curious contrivance, said to have been in- 
vented by a Down-Easter named Sumner, for prevent- 
ing one man, even if lie be draped in a mourning skin, 
from being owned by another man. Of course it 
would strike any one but an American as a very need- 
less article, especially out of place among staple goods, 
and one which ought never to be called for in a coun- 
try which takes such pains and pride to claim and 
proclaim that other invention of a man down South, 
called Jefferson, whereby one man is made equal to 
every other man. Still, it is well known that the 
Sumner unclasping machine is a very useful one, and 
well supplies a need long felt. 

Attempts are now made, as we -write, to introduce 
into public use another article, called the Fifteenth 
Amendment, and to put upon it the Constitutional pa- 
tent-mark, an article which is calculated to lunder any 
evilly disposed person from stripping off from another 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 317 

at election time, — a period when a certain strange ra- 
hies seizes Americans and makes them inclined to tear 
each other and their clothing, — their electoral vest- 
ments, or voting suits, especially if they do not suit 
them. The new pattern is black and white, and al- 
though it has had as yet a checkered fate, — some 
preferring it all white, some all black, others white 
with a leaden-colored border, — it is thought by shrewd 
buyers that the novelty will soon come into general 
use. These last-named goods are far from being fash- 
ionable at the South. 

One of the most surprising characteristics of our 
fashionable Constitutional shopping-place is, that ev- 
erybody finds here just the article to suit his taste, 
judgment, and even his fancy, whimsical as it may be. 
If Mr. J. C. Calhoun or Mr. J. Davis wants a com- 
plete outfit for States rights, he walks in, and has no 
difficulty in finding it just to his liking, and in a con- 
siderable variety of shades and materials. He puts 
his hand on one of the new styles marked " Article 
X," and is confirmed in his choice by reading upon the 
label the manufacturer's description : " The powers 
not delegated to the United States by the Constitu- 
tion, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to 
the States respectively, or to the people." He turns 
around, and, traversing other departments, discovers 
sundry other articles of like style to match these. 
He also lights upon more gauzy, thin, or fine-spun, 
fleecier goods to throw around the exposed shoulders 
of tlie States. 

On the other hand, if Mr. D. Webster or Mr. H. 
Clay desires a thorough suit for the central Federal fig- 



318 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ure of Uncle Samuel, lie is shown directly to the sec- 
tions where he can procure quantities of them ; hats 
to cover banking brains ; coats and vests to put over 
the inner works, to aid digestion and promote internal 
improvement ; pants, hosiery, and boots to keep up 
our Uncle's advancing strides over mountains, plains, 
and rivers. Such customers are, of course, walked up 
directly to section eight, and there are shown in a large 
box ample and well-made garments of the desired de- 
scription. On the top of this box the fabricators have 
put this explanation : " To make all laws which shall 
be necessary and proper for carrying into execution 
the foregoing powers." 

It was supposed by many of the original members 
of the firm, who got up this grand Constitutional ba- 
zaar, that Uncle Sam's concern had the exclusive right 
to make those bright, popular buttons called " coin," 
or " money " ; but it was discovered in a very short 
time that there was an elastic provision in the articles 
of copartnership, which allowed the individual mem- 
bers of the firm to manufacture, each on his own ac- 
count, these shining disks, and even to invent and put 
forth for sale paper substitutes, which at length be- 
came so much in vogue as to drive the metallic article, 
at times, wholly out of the market. Paper collars 
have not had a livelier run, nor damper shrinkages 
than these. 

Sta.tements are often put forth by people sitting on 
benches and having a grave, sometiiues a grave-clothes 
air, doubting the right of the Federal store to stamp ex- 
clusively and to put out for its own particular profit, 
a variety of things, kept there in well-locked sec- 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 319 

tions ; it being claimed that the composing members 
have a concurrent power to make, stamp, and vend the 
same goods. On some of these points the discussion is 
still going on, and as the partners are a jealous, sharp 
set, it is not likely soon to terminate. 

Much trouble has arisen iji regard to a large number 
of bills of credit which have been issued by, and are 
still outstanding against, the laro-e Federal concern. 
Some have questioned their power to manufacture this 
kind of paper and make it equal to hard coin. Others 
have doubted the legality of the step which the firm 
took in making this paper good for certain purposes, 
and not receivable as pay for certain kinds of debts 
due to the house, argviiug that if coin was better than 
paper, then the paper could not justly be made au 
equivalent ; and if no better, then that paper ought in 
all cases to be received as well by the firm as by 
others. After much argument before them, however, 
that popular court, the ballot, gave a verdict against 
those who so reasoned, and rendered a decree that, if 
there were no other good reasons, the arguments idto 
interesse suo and ad necessitatcm, especially when im- 
pelled by the motor of war, were too convincing to be 
set aside, and so legalized the discrimination. 

Very many people make an unauthorized use of the 
bazaar. They go in for articles so absurd, so trifling, 
or so unusual, that all the clerks la\igh outright, as 
soon as the inquiries are made. Some people, espe- 
cially members of Congress, candidates for office, small 
lawyers, raised by short hand-levers up towards a large 
occasion, which they find it difficult to reach, when 
talking of the things themselves, their own pockets, or 



320 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

their chances of offices and places, assert, when told 
that such things do not exist, that they can find them 
in the old Constitutional store. 

Accordingly, they post thither, and make themselves 
ridiculous or disagreeable, by tumbling over and soil- 
ing the goods that lie there in honest piles, to find 
their peculiar article. Some of these shojjpers last men- 
tioned are very keen-eyed, gifted with those optics spo- 
ken of by Hudibras, which see 

" Things which are not to be seen," 

and fancy that they see, in their mind's eye, patterns 
of what they are after, when in truth the patterns are 
not at all similar. If the goods found are speckled, 
checked, spotted, or figured, and the sample which 
they have brought has any specks, checks, spots, or 
figures in it, bearing the most general resemblance, but 
readily distinguishable from the goods inspected by 
any the most careless observer, if disinterested, they 
hasten away and proclaim very loudly that the same 
goods, of precisely the same material, color, make, and 
style, are found in heaps in the Constitutional shop. 
There is nothing so sharp as such eyes, except the sin- 
gle eye to the public good. 

So, on the other hand, obtuse, dense-headed observ- 
ers, unaccustomed to make distinctions, rush to the 
Constitutional with confused or ill-defined recollections 
of the patterns or styles they want, and buy and bring 
away packages of goods which, when exposed to a 
clear light, are at once seen to be wholly dissimilar. 
As in large stores, some people become confused by 
the variety, and select at random, or in a perplexed 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 321 

glamour, articles to match pieces at home either in 
color, texture, or quality, and assent with a mixed 
mind to the adroit suggestions of the salesman ; so in 
the various sections into which our Constitutional store 
is divided up, many good people, even deacons, vestry- 
men, the annual subscriber to missionary papers, and 
systematic charity bestowers, become, in the shifting 
cross-lights of commentaries, and remarks of story- 
tellers and others, as confused and astray in their 
notions, and lose their own not over-strong heads as 
completely as congressmen at an evening session, or 
the President during the closing hours of the last night 
of the congressional barbecue. 

There is no store so much talked about all over the 
United States as this Constitutional one ; and there are 
no goods so generally used or so popular as those which 
are either actually obtained there, or fancied to be in it 
for sale. Nicholas Biddle once got a gold-colored suit 
there which he wore in and around the vaults of the 
United States Bank, in Philadelphia, from 1816 to 1836; 
but General Jackson, for various reasons, some of which 
were very peculiar and of a hickory color, others as 
sound as oak, took such a dislike to it, that he finally 
persuaded the people that it was a very poor suit, and, 
in fact, never came from the Constitutional store, but 
was a deceptive imitation of goods there. 

Many persons have gone to the Federal store, to pro- 
cure water-proof constitutional goods, to wear in dredg- 
ing rivers and harbors, in laying down watery ways 
across States, and when at work on the coast, or ex- 
posed to the chilling winds from State capitols. Others 
insist upon purchasing there, also, long selvedges, or 
• 14* u 



322 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

narrow, iron-colored strips, which some declare to be 
very excellent material for binding States ; while oth- 
ers assert that it is only calculated for hemming them 
in uncomfortably. Some of these strips have a very 
elastic element in them, and can be made to stretch 
in parallel line's from Washington to the farthest 
border of the Union. The bands, or bindings, whijh 
they use, are also wonderfully elastic, and can be mul- 
tiplied like stars to the bewildering gaze of an enthu- 
siastic drinker. 

On the whole, it may be said, that while this great 
American store contains piles of invaluable goods, it is 
supposed by intelligent persons to hold more rights 
than were ever left to men. 



THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION. 



323 




CHAPTEE II. 

CONSTRUCTION; OR, WASHINGTON'S ADMINISTRATION. 

1789-1797. 

How the Tliirteen Colonial Children crept into their New Bed. — The 
Upholstering described. — Why Rhode Island was last m. — Who 
tucked her np. — Washington as Superintendent, and John Adams 
as First Assistant. — The Family low in Credit. — Amount of their 
Indebtedness compared with ours. — Washington's Inaugural. — His 
Exemption from Office Beggars, Committees, Pugilistic M. C.'s, boring 
Place-Seekers, enterprising Donors, etc. — Washington as a Spirit. — 
His Capacity to select a Cabinet. — Who they were. — Of Henry- 
Knox. — The Chief Justice and Attoniey-General. — Amendments to 
a perfect Constitution. — The Supreme Court as a Sound, Seaworthy 
Tribunal. — Why States cannot be sued by Individuals. — How Gov- 
ernments get around paying Interest on Principle. — Streaks of the 
Millennium. — Of the Public Debt. — Discrimination among Cred- 
itors. — Misfortune of being a Cisatlantic Holder of American Bonds. 

— Alexander Hamilton's Notions. — Washington's Receptions and 
Dinner-Parties. — The Political Color of the President's Silver Spoons 
and Window Curtains. — The Honeymoon of the new Government 
disturbed. — Ganderous Long-bills splash Washington. — The French 
Revolution and its Conundrums. — How answered by Washington and 
the Federals; how by Jefferson and the Anti-Federals. — The Cen- 
sus Act procures names without Owners. — The Naturalization Laws 
and their Pat-riot Products. — Polls and Polling-Places. — A Sinking 
Fund that did not sink — How Vermont made the Thirteen States old. 

— An Indian War. — Cincinnati begins. — Kentucky starts. — Mis- 
takes about Bourbon. — Washington's second Term. —What Genet 
did, and how he was done for. — Helpful Americans. — The Whiskey 
Rebellion of 1794. — The Year of Treaties; how they enlarged while 
they tied us. — Tennessee the Sixteenth State. — Nashville gets warm. 

— Washington's Farewell, and its cheap Imitations. — The Shades of 
Office. — Who crept in and who stepped into the Sunshine. 



CONSTRUCTION. 325 

THE thirteen colonial children, emancipated from 
parental mis-government in 1783, tired of sleep- 
ing together in the same old, rickety confederate bed, 
which had been hastily put together in 1777, and 
whose cords they found so small and hard as to cut 
through the thin mattress above, and so weak as to 
creak and threaten to go down under them, whenever 
they stirred or even spoke above a whisper, at last, in 
1789, obtained a new first-class constitutional bedstead. 
It was wide and roomy, with even, strong springs, and 
was easy to get in and out of, as well as very comely 
in shape, and well polished externally. 

This new article was, however, not decided upon by 
all the thirteen immediately. It was spoken for in 
1787, and, during that and the next year, eleven signi- 
fied their preference for it over the old tumble-down 
runibly. Little Khody was the baby in the old family, 
and, fearing to be overlaid and perhaps smothered by 
her larger bedfellows, did not crawl under the sheets 
of the newly upholstered bed until 1790 ; and not un- 
til New York and Virginia had agreed to be content 
with a fixed amount of bedclothing, instead of claim- 
ing, for themselves, that large Western comforter, those 
earth-colored strips, of the empire pattern, extending 
to the Pacific side of the bed, and large enough to cut 
up into a dozen good-sized State counterpanes. 

It was not necessary that this youngster, — nor yet 
North Carolina, who got in the year before, — should 
consent, in order to complete the change of arrange- 
ments from the old Confederate to the new Constitu- 
tional system ; but as it was an affectionate and gen- 
erous-hearted family, there was a general desire to 



326 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

conciliate all the members. And so when little Ehody 
got in and curled uj), she was joyfully tucked in by 
that good old faithful American " help," Washington, 
a great favorite, who had been so long in the fam- 
ily that he was loved by every one, and so generous 
and right-minded that, although several of the other 
domestics, such as Major John Armstrong and others, 
who had worked on very low wages with him through 
the war, proposed to him to take the house himself 
as proprietor, he indignantly refused so to use or 
abuse the affectionate trust of the household. 

Washington was, however, unanimously chosen Chief 
Superintendent, and our short, stout, resolute acquaint- 
ance, John Adams, whom we met at the top of the 
hill, July 4, 1776, was made his first assistant. 

The family now set up housekeeping. Like most 
families in the United States, they were at the outset 
poor. They were especially low in credit ; for in 
consequence of the issue by the Continental Congresses, 
during the war, of about $300,000,000 of paper 
money, its value had so depreciated that it became of 
little use except to line trunks or to patch up cham- 
bers as ruinous as itself. They were also greatly in 
debt, owing at home and abroad $ 79,463,476, — a debt 
which, instead of being paid off or even reduced, grew, 
in spite of every economy, good judgment, and excel- 
lent management, for the next seventeen years, and 
was not fully discharged until 1824. This debt 
amounted to about nineteen dollars per head for 
every man, woman, and child of all colors in the 
United States at that period. Still, they were not in 
circumstances as discouraging as are we, their de- 



CONSTRUCTION. 327 

scendants, eighty years later ; for, estimating oiir popu- 
lation now at thirty-eight millions, each man, woman 
and child now owns a right to pay as his share of 
the national debt, sixty-eight dollars, besides a large, 
comfortable sum for State, county, city, and town 
indebtedness, which never figured themselves upon 
the purses or imaginations of our golden-aged ances- 
tors. This latter ownership is so much the more 
wonderful as it represents shares in obligations, not 
wrought from outlays of blood or money in the coun- 
try's service, but blood and money sucked by corpo- 
rate and private straws from our ever-troubled and 
ever-bubbling public treasuries. 

Washington, after a laborious journey, reached New 
York, and, on the 30th of April, 1789, took the oath of 
office as President, on the spot now covered by the 
United States Treasury in Wall Street. The bulls and 
bears of that day, — mere calves and cubs, — not 
strengthened by the pushing horns and large squeezing 
powers which have added such force to their descend- 
ants, might have lieard, in the intervals of their 
rough play, tlie solid, honest, heart-felt words of his 
Inaugural, in which, among other things, he uttered 
those now strange, old-fashioned wishes and expecta- 
tions, that " all employed in the administration of the 
Government would execute faithfully and with suc- 
cess the functions allotted to their charge." 

No crowds of patriotic office-seekers stepped over 
the sills of the new President. Quires and tons of pa- 
pers, now quadrienially rolled into the Presidential ware- 
house, containing uncounted autographic testimonials 
to the transcendent abilities and spotless purity of at 



328 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

least one man in tliirty of our entire population for 
suffering places, were then left to the innocent uses of 
book-keepers and book-makers. We search in vain 
for any records of enterprising committees, State or 
county, pressing upon the uninformed intelligence 
of the first office appointer the names of persons, 
otherwise left in native obscurity, for Cabinet seats 
and responsible missions, which might possibly in 
thoughtless liberality turn the drippings of their 
high eaves into their own hungry pails. So far as 
our examination has discovered, there were no old 
battered political hulks, their rigging split by the 
gales of speculation or the contrary winds of local 
indignation, which put into the Presidential port in 
stress of weather. 

Gentlemen waited to be sent for, and did not bore 
through Washington's bedroom wall to present hand- 
some reminders of services to be yet gratefully per- 
formed, or to leave their photographs and a solar 
microscope, in order that he might by the latter descry 
something in the former and in their originals. 

Could that modest, slow-minded chief be now per- 
mitted, through the conjury of a medium, to sit by 
the side of his successors, during the honeymoon of 
their official marriages to the state, and see the proces- 
sion of great men for whom offices wait pass by with 
their directories of certificates to high intellectual 
power and eminent fitness for — everything official, 
he would certainly divide his surprise between two 
great convictions, — the scandalous waste to which un- 
claimed virtue runs in this prodigal land, and the terri- 
ble contrasts between all the past performances of the 
ins and the easy, liberal promises of the outs. 



CONSTRUCTION. 329 

President Washington had no difficulty, even unaid- 
ed by pugilistic M. C.'s or other metallic " rings," in 
selecting gentlemen to fill the three newly created execu- 
tive departments of Foreign Affairs, Treasury, and War. 
Thomas Jefferson, forty-six years old, was requested 
to assist in managing our foreign relations and friends. 
Alexander Hamilton, in his thirty-second year, was so- 
licited to pump something into that very dry cistern, 
the treasury. To the red-leaved portfolio of war was 
summoned General Henry Knox, — the Sherman of 
the Eevolution. It was thouglit that the man who 
had, in times of Eevolutionary discontent, wisely al- 
layed the complaints of an army whose courage in the 
field he could nobly stimulate, and who had stroked 
the right way the rising fur of a disbanded soldiery, 
could deal justly witli the approaching pension lists, 
and would fairly adjust the burdens of the seven lean 
years of war, to and through the many rank and good 
years which now appeared in the visions of our Ameri- 
can Pharaohs. The new Secretary felt, in taking his 
place on the war bench, that he was summoned to a 
sort of military coroner's inquest on the dead body of 
the late Eevolution, which had served well in active 
duty, l)ut which, like every such thing in our hurrying 
country, — old people, worn-out utensils, and other 
ex-useful machines, — was considered a respectable 
encumbrance. 

<'- To the post of chief justice of the newly created 
Supreme Court President Washington nominated John 
Jay, and for Attorney-General, Edmund Eandolph of 
Virginia. It is to be noted that the President, Secre- 
tary of State, and Attorney- General were all from the 



330 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

same State, — the greatest Cabinet-making, State- 
bureau manufactory in the Union. If Connecticut, 
Pennsylvania, or North Carolina sent any delegates to 
the President to remonstrate against the appointment 
of two gentlemen from the same State, the reporters 
of that time have shunned the bare mention of it. 

Nothing on earth, not even in the United States, 
is perfect ; and in the United States especially things 
most perfect are always in order to be amended. 
Within the very first year of the ratification of the 
Constitution, ten amendments were proposed and 
carried, making it an old knife with new blades, and 
finishing it up into what some people, with great 
novelty, proclaim it to be, the most perfect instrument 
ever invented. 

The keel of the Supreme Court was laid in 1789 ; 
and the vessel, launched, well officered, and manned, 
provided with new spars, anchors, and compass, was 
despatched from port to ride the turbulent seas 
of maritime strife and constitutional conflict, and to 
override laws and treaties which drift athwart the path 
of the Constitution. By and in it States could origi- 
nally be pursued ; but after submitting for about fifty 
years to the chase of individual plaintiffs, the States, 
headed by Georgia, roused to a sovereign indignation 
and ruffled pride by being compelled to answer for 
grievances inflicted by themselves on Indians, negroes, 
white persons, and such trash, procured the passage 
of a jealous amendment, relieving them from such 
embarrassments. Beautiful is the theory that States 
can do no wrong to their own citizens. Millennarian 
is the assumption that they are so ready to spring to 



CONSTRUCTION. 331 

» 

their loads of duty, that no judicial whip, with a snap- 
per of judgment and execution, is necessary to quick- 
en their slackening consciences. As a beautiful corol- 
lary from these delightful premises, is the most com- 
fortable practice of governments not to pay interest on 
claims against themselves, however hoar with age ; for 
the government assumes to itself the virtue of being 
always ready, as the fons et origo Justitce, to pay, and 
is presumably always pressing its offers to pay upon 
its creditors. 

At certain points we now touch the millennium. 

At the next session of Congress, in 1790, Hamilton 
presented a report on that subject which, like the 
poor, is always with us, — the public debt. Of course 
every one thought that it was right to pay the credit- 
ors who were fortunate enough to live in Europe, who 
had, at whatever discount, taken our promises ; but a 
great many people with caoutchouc principles doubted 
wliether men silly enough to be born on this side the 
Atlantic had as good a right to be paid ; just as some 
discriminate between their autographs affixed to notes 
held by their friends, — leaving such to the mercy of 
blood, — and those held by strangers, which they de- 
spatch from unpleasant remembrances by payment. 
Hamilton recognized no such thin, veneering logic 
over parts of the public chest ; and he was honestly 
supported by Congress and their makers. 

Philadelphia was made tlie national capital for the 
rest of the century ; and here, for the coming seven 
years, Washington's weekly receptions on Tuesdays, 
and his dinner-parties on Thursdays, created a stir 
among the disciples of Penn, and caused much green- 



332 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

looking ink to be shed from cavilling pens all tlirongli 
the coimtiy. Like congregations which look with a 
keen-edged criticism npon the social movements of 
their clergymen, the people thus early began to peer 
into the green-room of the President's mansion, to 
count the silver spoons, to feel of the window-curtains, 
and to compare their silken qualities favorably with 
their own hangings, and tlie qualities of the Presiden- 
tial tenant, as thereby affected, unfavorably witJi their 
own. A democratic people prefer to occupy the 
green-room themselves. 

The honeymoon of our newly wedded constitu- 
tional government was not all roseate. Througli the 
press a wonderful amount of good advice and double- 
tongued compliment as already given to the old gen- 
tleman, who was not likely to forget all the pecca- 
dillos he had, and to wonder why he liad been re- 
strained from the easy commission of others Avhich he 
had not committed. 

The French Eevolution had now begun its series of 
bloody conundrums; and, not content with posing its 
European circle of listeners with perplexing questions, 
crossed the Atlantic, and thrust upon the administra- 
tion and demanded immediate answers to some very 
bothering acrostics and puzzles. The grand riddle 
which they prided tliemselves upon, and required to 
be first answered, might be stated in the rule-of- 
three form thus : If France, with a popid.ation of 
seventeen millions, assisted America to gain her inde- 
pendence from 1778 to 1783, what aid should America, 
with a population of 3,927,827, give, in 1790, to the 
Constituent Assembly, assuming to act for France, 



CONSTRUCTION. 333 

against the monarchical adherents of Louis XVI. and 
the turbulent guillotining mob, struggling up into 
fierce, resentful power imder Robespierre, Danton, and 
Desmoulins ? This riddle was differently guessed by 
the leading members of our government. Washing- 
ton, Adams, Hamilton, and Jay, now recognized as the 
leaders of a party for the first time called the Federal, 
put in the ready, safe, and w4se answer, " None " ; 
while Jefferson and Randolph, in the government, and 
Madison, Gallatin, and young Edward Livingston, out 
of it, — now the heads of the anti-Federal party, — 
spelled out from their general love of liberty and 
sympathy for those struggling against monarchical 
power, without regard to international rights or home 
duties, the response, " All that we can." 

Of course much could be said on each side, and of 
course much was said ; for the Boston " News-Letter " 
had now a very vivacious following all over the thir- 
teen States, many of which barked in chorus, even at 
the majestic figure of Washington. Very hard names, 
too, and even imputations of felonious attempts upon 
the person of Liberty herself, facetiously assumed by 
party zeal to be impersonated in the last uppermost 
French faction, were hissed out against the grand old 
chief of the nation by those long-billed, ganderous 
persons, who, in the warm days of politics, paddle 
around in dirty pools and splash, with noisy uproar, 
the black ooze upon the cleanest and purest who pass 

by. 

Thus even the golden age had ugly quartz and soil- 
ing dirt interspecking it. 

Congress, during the same session of 1790, passed 



334 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

the first act for counting the people of the United 
States, — an enumeration which, being paid for in 
certain years by the number of names taken, has 
sometimes resulted in " counting one's chickens before 
they were hatched," — the census-paper containing 
more names than owners of them. 

A law was also passed setting in motion that large 
machine for manufacturing voters, commonly called a 
Naturalization Act, whereby a singular pat-riot pav- 
ing is turned out, by which our polling-places are 
Mclrishized with some very curious bricks, and our 
polls sometimes are made to suffer by brickbats. 

A fund was likewise established for sinking the na- 
tional debt ; but like the Irishman's cork contrivance, 
put on to enable him to drown himseK, the sinking 
fund, in practice under the statute device, became so 
buoyant that for several years the debt floated up- 
wards instead of downwards. 

The year 1791 was signalized by the birth of Ver- 
mont, as a State, into the Union, — a family event 
which at once added many venerable years and an 
historic solidity to the original members, who thence- 
forward became "The Old Thirteen." A national 
bank was also ushered into existence, and was care- 
fully wet-nursed by Hamilton, the government lend- 
ing it $ 2,000,000, or one fifth of its capital, — a very- 
comfortable christening present. 

An Indian war which had broken out the preced- 
ing year within the present limits of Ohio, — '- as if to 
remind the country of its old irritating eruptions, — 
raged with some violence through 1791, reddening in 
spots into a rash and producing some congestion of 



CONSTRUCTION. 335 

officers at military head-quarters. General St. Clair, 
marching northwards with two thousand men, from 
Tort Washington, the future Cincinnati, then con- 
sisting of a rude stockade surrounded by a few wattled 
huts, and containing not exceeding thirty wliite set- 
tlers, the oldest not having been there three years, 
penetrated a district then obscure, but now even called 
Dark County, where he was disagreeably surprised by 
a party of Indians, and lost nearly three fourths of 
his troops. The war of course became chronic, linger- 
ing along until 1795, when it was finally got imder by 
General Anthony "Wayne, the old stormer of Stony 
Point. 

Kentucky, wTOught out of a small Boone settlement, 
in 1769, came forward in 1792, and was welcomed as 
the fifteenth State. Some wavy-notioned people im- 
agine that her Bourbon, reinforcing her courage and 
spirits, emboldened her to make this early application ; 
but this is a mistake which sober history is glad to 
correct. 

Washington, although annoyed by the ganderous 
long-bills for his steady adherence to the neutrality 
of his country between the raging factions that were 
now quarrelling over the sanguinary conundrums, put 
forth by the civil war in France, finally consented, 
against his own washes, to become a candidate for 
re-election as President. His consent was unani- 
mously decreed to be the popular wish by the elec- 
toral colleges. John Adams, less fortunate than his 
chief, was content, however, with seventy-seven votes 
out of one hundred and twenty-seven, the other fifty 
being given to the Democratic candidate, George Clin- 
ton of New York. 



336 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

About a month after the second inauguration of 
Washington, in 1793, that lively little Frenchman, 
Edmond Charles Genet, somewhat excited by the revo- 
lutionary dance about the scaffold of Louis XVI., and 
the rather wild scenes around the revolutionary tribu- 
nal in Paris, capered over on a visit to the people Of 
this country, and landed at Charleston, South Carolina. 
Although commissioned by the French Convention, now 
the subject of its bloody master Eobespierre, as a Min- 
ister to our government, Monsieur Genet took upon his 
arrival a sudden fancy to aquatic sports, and despatched 
on his own hook several cruisers to fish in the troubled 
waters of the Atlantic for any English, Spanish, or 
Dutch flying-fish that could be caught. The old 
American Squire did not at all relish this international 
fishing-party, which proposed to use American lines, 
hooks, sinkers, and bait for the benefit of French 
packers. Kindly but firmly he requested M. Genet's 
forwarders to order him back again. There have 
always been Americans, born with magnifying specta- 
cles fastened firmly on their noses, by which every 
form of freedom, individual or national, spelt out to 
them a clear license to help any party, fraction, or 
entirety of a people fighting, or claiming to fight, 
against the old governing power. " Wherever you see a 
crown, hit it," is their one motto. In April, 1793, 
this class had many representatives, who thought that 
the French gentleman and his fishing-parties were all 
right. 

In 1794 a Whiskey Eebellion arose, not in Ken- 
tucky nor among the Bourbonites, but in Pennsyl^ 
vania. This insurrection defied for some time the 



CONSTRUCTION. 337 

cautionary, expostulating, and well-sealed proclama- 
tions of the President; but when the sharp military 
drum-beat, backed by fifteen thousand militia, with 
well-set bayonets, was heard in the western part of 
the State, its leaders and their weak followers reeled 
back into quiet and submission. Nothing so much 
shows the simplicity of that golden age of the Eepub- 
lic as this resistance to a whiskey tax. In our more 
debased but keener times, people distil much comfort 
from a heavy tax — far heavier than that of 1794 — 
through taps and tubes placed in the obnoxious arti- 
cle, which is led off and around so circuitously and 
ingeniously as hardly to know where it is going, 
until all of a sudden it falls plump in large coin 
within the well-adjusted pockets of the non-complain- 
ing manufacturer. Instead of getting up insurrections 
in Pennsylvania against the high excise, he now forms 
combinations at Washington to raise it higher. 

The year 1795 M^as the era of treaties, — establish- 
ing diplomatic lines to England, — which ever since 
the peace of 1783 had been uneasily bobbing up and 
down, neither fishing nor cutting bait ; to Spain, 
whose American possessions of Florida and Louisiana 
were thereby, staked and roped off from our greedy 
boundaries ; to the dark Dey of Algiers, whose corsairs 
were thus enmeshed in the silken nets ; and, finally, 
to the Northwestern Indian tribes, who, as usual, gave 
us a large piece of territory for a little piping peace 
with hot embers on the top. Through the Spanish 
treaty flowed, and ever since has continued to flow for 
us, the wide-elbowed Mississippi. The exertion of 
signing it exhausted the power of Spain in North 
15 V 



338 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



M„ii,;'4iV,l,t^. 




CONSTRUCTION. 339 

America; for five years later she had not vitality- 
enough to hold either of these possessions against 
Napoleon, and the orange and sugar States fell out of 
her ever-relaxing hand into the clutching and restless 
fingers of France. In 1796, Tennessee, making the 
sixteenth State, was welcomed into the household. 
Its capital, Nashville, settled in 1779, contained only 
a few cabins ; but the folds of the Cumberland warmed 
them rapidly into life. 

Washington, then sixty-four years of age, announced 
in September, 1796, his intention to retire to the 
sunshine of private life. His farewell was the bless- 
ing of a ripe sage upon a sorrowing people. It was 
none the less genuine, rich, and good, because comi- 
cally imitated by a few of his successors. Even An- 
drew Johnson's did not belittle it. 

Several gentlemen, it was discovered, had a fancy to 
try the official shades which the great American was 
so glad to quit. Of course Virginia supposed that 
the rotation in the office should, like charity, begin at 
home. Such, too, Avas the opinion of sixty-eight elec- 
tors ; but as seventy-one disagreed with them, the 
short, stout, well-grained " column of Congress " was 
transferred, for the four foUowng years, into the ex- 
ecutive post. 



CHAPTER III. 

OLD FAMILY PORTRAITS. 

Modern Photographic Albums hke Ancient Roman Simulacra. — The Pleas- 
ure of looking at the Likenesses of Friends. — The Portraits of our 
Fore-Fathers. — Our dear old Great- Grandfather George Washing- 
ton. — His one hundred and twenty-eight Original Portraits. — His 
unique Character; of the same Size all the Way up. — His Manners 
and Cliaracteristics. — How the Eighteenth Century, so long mated, 
refused to survive him. — Our Great-Grand and good Mother Martha 
Washington. — The Resemblance between her and a Bowl of ripe 
Strawberries and Cream. — Her Pride. — What Qualities were corseted 
in her Bosom. — Our favorite Uncle, Benjamin Franklin. — How 
the Sky got into his Face and how it stays charged. — Looks like an 
hereditary Director of all the Estates. — A bom Trustee. — What an 
idea Burns might have got of him in 1774, and how expressed it. — 
Of our Aunt, Mrs. James Madison; and what a fine Lady she was. — 
Her careful Dress and Manners. — Impressive but patronizing. — How 
Time forgot her, and the Years ran on un-notched. — The forty Years 
she acted as Presidentess. — Patrick Henry described in Dress, 
Person, shooting Game, and taking Audiences. — Our dear Visitor, 
General Lafayette; his Difficulties in reaching us; his noble Bride; 
his Embarkation at a Spanish Port; his Labors here; his two subse- 
quent Visits, and how he survived Hand-shaking and Kissing. — About 
John Jay and his Wife Sallie Livingston. — How they lived and 
what he became. — Glances at Israel Putnam and his expressive 
Face; at Nathaniel Greene and his square, Quaker Character; at 
the Telescopic Eyes of Francis Marion, with a Dash at his soldierly 
Qualities. — The Effigies of the Wise IVIen — General Sketches of our 
Heroes and Heroines. — A Heart Delineation of the Mothers, Wives, 
and Sisters of the Men of the Revolution. 

COLD indeed must be tlie heart, colder than any 
which pendulates in the readers of this History, 
that does not warm np pleasantly when carried by its 



OLD FAJIILY PORTRAITS. 341 

owner into what is wisely called in the country " the 
living-room," and there obeying the electrical summons 
of the eye, wanders with it lovingly through the pages 
of a family photographic album. 

The elder Romans had a chamber, placed in the in- 
nermost part of the house, devoted to the images of 
the departed members of the family ; images named 
after, but not always likenesses of, those who had led 
the way in the family history. So great was their 
reverence for these, so intimate the relation main- 
tained with them, that, on the departure or return of 
any of the household, these silent figures were saluted 
with the same affection as the living-. 

The family photographic album is the modern cham- 
ber in which are kept our simulacra. Enter it as often 
as we may, scan as often as we choose its portraitures, 
we never survey with indifference, and rarely without 
better and tenderer feelings, these mute, dear faces. 

Just as dear, just as touching to our national feel- 
ings, sensibiKties, and emulous gratitude, just as in- 
structive to head and heart, are the cherished and 
beloved features of our national forefathers. Turn we 
then a few leaves with interest, perchance with profit. 

An instinctive delicacy places the elders at the head 
of the procession. 

Of course the very first in tlie book, as in our hearts, 
is the dear, good face of our great-great-great-grand- 
father, George Washington. How well we all know 
it. One hundred and twenty-eight original portraits 
were taken of him, between 1770, when he Avas thirty- 
eight years old, and 1796, when he was sixty-four, by 
various painters, from the elder Peale to Sharpless. 



342 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The statue of Houdon, ordered by Virginia in 1785, 
and finished in 1788, perpetuates in marble, to its vis- 
itors at Eichmond, as its engraved copies have made 
familiar to all, the full-length majestic figure and port 
of the wise, thoughtful, and careful General. Yet nu- 
merous as are the likenesses, multiplied by various 
art processes, and scattered through parlors, bedrooms, 
sheds, cabins, and books, we instantly recognize and 
instinctively love the noble features of our dear old 
grandfather. Very grave he is, very sedate, as if he 
was thinking how it was best to settle in life some of 
his large household. His thoughts seem so earnest 
and weighty that we cannot interrupt them. Good 
and humane as is the face, we cannot bounce in, leap 
upon his high knees, pull lovingly his long hair, and 
then scamper away witli a sense of unspoken forgive- 
ness in our thumping hearts. no ! There is an awe 
in his presence, benevolent as it is, a width of respon- 
sibility in his thought-beaming face, which stills and 
hushes us. Very reserved and calm, seldom volunteer- 
ing a remark, never a laugh, for mere entertainment, 
he makes ordinary conversation appear like empty 
chattering. Yet ever gracious is he, ever gentle, well- 
bred, and self-contained. His reticence is not sour, 
but thoughtful, his silence the waiting upon a large 
utterance. Intent and earnest after something he 
always seems. Even in his relaxation from formal 
work, and when least occupied, he seems like a good 
fisherman sitting on the bank, carefully watching the 
float, and fixed upon securing the nibbles. 

A noble face ! just the frontispiece to a great His- 
tory, the preface to an Encyclopaedia of Moral Philos- 



OLD FAMILY PORTRAITS. 343 

ophy and Political Eights, the trunk of a large genea- 
logical tree, the grandfather of a large, proud family. 

Stories we have of his boyhood ; but they do not 
strike or stick to us as accounts of a boy. Even when 
cutting down the cherry-tree, and then scorning the 
boy's ordinary deception in regard to the author of the 
deed ; when mastering the blooded horse, at the ex- 
pense of the animal's life, and then hastening to avow 
to his stern but just mother his exclusive agency in 
the fatal conquest, — he seems the same calm, staid, 
mature impersonation of heroic Truth, as when he 
stalks with longer strides through a nation's history. 

Some naturalists tell us that the trunk of the tree 
does not lose its bulk as it grows upward ; but that, if 
we measure the tapering trunk and its outspreading 
branches, we shall find that together they form the 
same size and weight throughout. So Washington, if 
viewed in sections, appears of equal size, dimensions, 
and compacted force in each. As a boy wise, grave, 
and truthful ; large in frame, of unusual strength, but 
gentle in its use ; from books learning little, from men 
much, from out-door life its large, fresh, wholesome, 
healthy activity, and wide breadths of suggestion. As 
a young man unweariedly industrious, unmistakably 
honest, impressing all with his oak-like qualities ; 
carefully and perfectly accomplishing whatever he un- 
dertook, whether engaged in surveying a farm, keeping 
a journal, or supplying by study and observation defi- 
ciencies in education which his own good, well-balanced 
sense had discovered ; loving honestly, and honestly 
describing in verse his heart affection for his " lowland 
beauty." As an officer, at twenty-three, self-reliant 



344 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

because consciously well disciplined, vigilant, careful, 
• yet as personally brave as the impulsive and unre- 
strained ; confided with missions to the hostile French 
settlements on the Ohio, and saving, by his knowledge 
of savage life and habits, by his sagacity, self-com- 
mand, and tact, the remnants of Braddock's army. 

As a statesman well rounded in intelligence, well 
poised in judgment, who so well comprehended, 
weighed, and settled the new questions of colonial 
rights as to draw from Patrick Henry the eulogy " that 
for solid information and sound judgment he was the 
greatest man on the floor " of the Continental Congress, 
and from that Congress itself its emphatic practical 
indorsement by his election as commander-in-chief. 

As a general, managing small resources and means 
so as to secure the best results and completest ends ; 
sparing of the lives of Ins soldiers as of the members 
of his family, yet venturing his own when an emer- 
gency made his great figure in front the pledge of suc- 
cess ; refusing all j)ay and emoluments ; keeping a 
minute and conscientious account of his expenses, and 
hastening at the close of the war to place his regi- 
mentals at the opening door of Peace. As a President, 
marching abreast of new duties and obligations, 
thoroughly comi^rehending, and, by a wise forbearance 
and clear-hearted charity, mastering the struggling, 
passionate forces of new-born and grand ambitions. 
State rivalries, and material competitions, and so calm- 
ing, adjusting, regulating, yet re-enforcing them by 
healthy elements, — not by compromise of principle, 
but by high conscientious impartiality, and just, equi- 
posed authority, — as to receive the converging ap- 



OLD FAMILY PORTRAITS. 345 

proval and accordant praise of good men of all shades 
of opinion. 

Dear, good old grandfather ! no wonder that the 
eighteenth century hastened to follow thee ; no won- 
der that, wedded to thee so long and lovingly, it cared 
not to survive the separation, and within a fortnight 
gathered itself into the same tomb, more loved for the 
presence than life divided from thee. 

On the next page of our album is our great-great- 
grand and good mother Mrs. Martha Washington. 
We love so much to look at her sweet, handsome face, 
full of a large, generous, grandmotherly nature as a 
wide and deep bowl heaped with ripe straM^Dcrries 
laughing through unstinted masses of rich yellow, un- 
watered cream. We feel at once that there is amply 
enough to go round the largest old-fashioned family, 
and no fear, if visitors come in, of its not holding out, 
or of a scarcity for the kitchen. She was called Lady 
Washington, because they could not help it ; for she 
was a lady. 

Of course our grandmother was proud; not vain, 
nor boastful, but with pride of character, the pride 
that stiffens virtue into well-doing, makes life gracious, 
and fences in goodness from stray gossips, and self- 
constituted censors who stray from their own dis- 
ordered homes into their neighbor's well-regulated 
households. 

Never were higher, truer, more valuable qualities, 
principles, and habits corseted in a female bosom than 
lived in hers. 

The next page is thumb-worn and greased by fre- 
quent handling; for Uncle Benjamin Franklin is a 
15* 



346 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

deserved favorite with the family. We should have 
liked to live with him, or if the house, as was natural, 
was too full for that, to have made long visits at his 
mansion. His is a right royal, good face, is it not ? 
He looks as if he was always in love with a whole 
school of well-behaved, sweet-mannered children, and 
was about to take out from his capacious pockets, with 
a sly, benevolent surprise, a large assorted lot of pres- 
ents. His face beams with a broad, heavenly tranced- 
ness, as if it had taken toll from his sky-tapping kite, 
and had become charged with positive celestial elec- 
tricity. He looks as if he might have been chosen 
the executor of all the estates in the Union ; and as if 
half the pangs of death were abstracted from those 
who were to leave their children and property to his 
honest, wise, and efficient care. He seems like a born 
trustee for schools, an hereditary director of charities, 
— one nominated in every village and town to every 
responsible place, and elected unanimously. 

In his broadly balanced characteristics there is, too, 
a latent, reserved force, which makes us fancy that he 
might, when commissioner to England, in 1774, have 
paid a visit to Burns in Scotland and suggested to him, 
as advice to others, those shrewd lines : — 

" Ay free, aff han' your story tell, 
When wi' a bosom crony ; 
But still keep something to yoursel 
Ye scarcely tell to ony." 

In fact, it is upon this felt reserve of uncommuni- 
cated goodness that we anchor our loving trust, feel- 
ing that the flukes cannot be uplifted nor our con- 
fidence drag. Among the few historical characters 



OLD FAMILY PORTRAITS. 347 

that red-mark the past 5873 years of the accepted 
chronology of our race, Franklin stands among the 
first half-dozen who reconcile us to public greatness, 
whose individuality is not obscured, whose virtues are 
not hazed, whose purity is not flecked anywhere by 
any soil from the public highways. 

A very fine lady was our aunt, Mrs. James Madison. 
That is very manifest by even a casual glance at her 
carefully arranged head-gear, her elaborately disposed 
hair, her effectively adjusted shawl, her well-studied 
laces and thoughtfully selected jewelry, collars, cuffs, 
and gloves. A little too fine, perhaps, to be cordially 
loved. A young modest person would, in spite of her 
assuring ease of manner, feel respectfully uneasy in 
her presence ; but so respectable, so liighly respectable 
she was, and still shows in her portrait, that we are all 
very proud of her. If she was exacting, she gave in 
return and to all equal measures of refined courtesy 
and attention. She was very elegant in her manners, 
but she was patronizing. Very impressive with her 
grand airs, but still patronizing. She lit up the White 
House with the radiance of cultivated beauty, the re- 
finements of courtly ease and high-bred manner, but 
still was she patronizing. 

She had gone through a third of a century of years 
when the eighteenth century died. She afterwards so 
cajoled and pleasantly imposed upon Time, that he for- 
got to score several notches against her, and she reached 
her eighty-second year, about six months before the 
next half-century was complete, before it occurred to 
him that the handsome old lady, with the smooth rosy 
face, had actually gained twelve lustres on the allotted 



348 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

human term. While her husband was not President 
until 1809, and continued so only eight years, ovir Aunt 
Madison acted like a President's wife before she went 
into the Federal mansion, and carried her high head- 
dress and head under it, like a Presidentess, thirty-two 
years after he left the Executive residence. 

On the next page of our album is an awkward, tall, 
ungainly, raw-boned figure, slightly stooping in the 
shoulders. How it was got together it is difficult to 
conjecture, how kept together still more puzzling. 
With a sallow complexion, iron-bound brow, stern lines 
running down and apparently holding immovably a 
large, rigid mouth, with a face like a large, well-filled, 
cheerful barn, with the door open, our good-hearted, 
noble-souled cousin, Patrick Henry, looks out at us 
as if he had been stared at before. Fortunately, our 
Aunt Madison is on the other side of the leaf, and can- 
not be disturbed by his slovenly dress. The features 
show an uneducated man, yet one of strong individ- 
uality, a capacity for great endurance, a fearlessness of 
personal consequences, and a will which would, even 
if the traces were cut, draw the load by the bit. Of 
course he loved a fishing-rod and gun, and told stories 
all day long. Much pith there was in his daily gath- 
ered anecdotes, which he extracted from all passing 
things, and put into the indolent, good-for-nothing 
crowd that hung around the tavern, or which crystal- 
lized around the stove in his too readily neglected law 
office. Up to his twenty-fourth year he had been a 
farmer and country store-keeper ; but as his only inter- 
est in the farm was the fish which ran through its 
liquid ways, and as his account of stock stopped at 



OLD FAMILY PORTRAITS. 349 

the fish-hooks, powder, and ball, which he speedily 
borrowed of himself without charge, he naturally failed 
to acquire anything but sport out of either. He and 
Henry Clay were born near each other. Neither of 
them makes a good portrait ; both were careless of their 
personal appearance, and each was as generous as an 
apple-tree in full bearing, or a shower in June, which 
slakes the thirst of lazy meadows lying on tlieir backs 
with their mouths wide open. 

But what a treat it must have been to hear Patrick 
Henry speak. The small dishonesties of rhetoric he 
scorned. To its greatest opportunities, however, he 
strode with a master's step and might. His long, sal- 
low features then glowed, the stern lines melted into 
an illuminating intellectual beauty, his crooked figure, 
a moment before like a telescope placed on end and 
sliding by sections into itself, then stretched out and 
up into manliest exaltation, and erect, grandiose dig- 
nity. His keen words, like the battle-axe of the Doug- 
las, cleaved the subject from head to chine. His large 
natural thoughts rushed up the summits of argument, 
as the free winds sweep the hills, without labor or 
effort, and shook all brains, wise or unwise, dull or 
quick, cultured or untutored, bending their tops before 
his resistless march, and shaking all their obstinate 
roots by his relentless grasp. No grander storm of 
logic, invective, irony, wit, humor, sharp demonstra- 
tion, soul-rousing appeal, or tender pathos ever passed 
over an audience and stirred them from the deep depths 
of their nature than that which he awoke. No class 
interests, like those of the Virginia parsons for their 
tobacco tithes, no selfish isolations, like the petty 



350 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

claims of neighborhood squires, no encroachments on 
popular rights, like the Stamp Act or tea duties, 
could withstand the noble sweep of his eloquence. 
The tribune of the people, he was regarded, ere he had 
reached his thirty-fifth year, as without exception the 
greatest orator in America, if not in the world. 

On the opposite page is the photograph of a dear 
visitor to our family. General Lafayette. We never 
cared to inquire whether lie was a relation or not. He 
was just as good to us as an own brother. He first 
came to see us when we were poor and needed friends. 
He had great difficulty in reaching us, as his own gov- 
ernment gave orders to stop him. His young bride, 
equally noble in her nature, encouraged his coming. 
He was obliged to escape from France into Spain, and 
in a Spanish port to take passage in a Spanish ship, 
the only cargo of any value, except that made up of 
Columbus and his one hundred and twenty men from 
Palos in 1492, that ever came to us from the land of 
the Cid. The spirited young marquis remained with 
us from 1777 to 1781, fighting among our bravest, suf- 
fering privations with the most patriotic, confided in 
and beloved by Washington and the best of the Kevo- 
lution. He made us two visits after the war, once in 
1784, and the second time just forty years later, upon 
a special invitation of the nation. Proud and glad 
were we all to see him. The most wonderful part of 
the story is, that, after enduring vigorous hand-shaking 
through each of our then twenty-four States, and kiss- 
ing all the children from two years old and upwards, 
he survived the job ten years. 

We must now turn over the leaves rapidly, catching 



OLD FAMILY PORTRAITS. 351 

quick, pleasant glances at the fine, pale scholarly fea- 
tures of the pure-minded John Jay, and, on the oppo- 
site side, of the handsome face and form of his accom- 
plished wife Sallie Livingston, who mated him when 
he was only nineteen, and consoled his heart and in- 
vigorated his head for twenty-eight eventful years, 
during which his inflexible patriotism, solid judgment, 
and weighty learning placed him by the side of Wash- 
ington and John Adams in the estimation of the 
American household. 

Then come the bluff face of hearty old Israel Put- 
nam, whose expression bears the clearly read inscrip- 
tion carved on his tombstone, " He dared to lead 
where any dared to follow " ; the massed, trustworthy 
head of Nathaniel Greene, with its square, Quaker 
characteristics ; Francis Marion's calm, lucid, tele- 
scopic eyes, and his farmer -like breadth of front, ani- 
mated by the dash which egged him, when in the 
saddle, to plucky marches ; and a long procession of 
valiant men and noble women, — family portraits in 
oiir national home gallery, — which gem and illumi- 
nate our collection and summon fresh pride to our 
patriotism, and new pleasures, on each review, to our 
hearts. 

It is quite needless to suggest that here, too, are 
the well-preserved effigies of those Wise Men whom 
we saw together on the summit of July 4, 1776, and 
whose remembered figures flitted often through the 
varied scenes of the Eevolution and alighted in the 
green boughs of our memories. 

Some of these faces are singularly handsome, illumi- 
nated with the beauty of great purposes. Some, how- 



352 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ever, are rugged as hillocks, rich in mould but unsub- 
dued by the plough of culture or the spade of refining 
taste. Some few hide mean purposes behind great, 
rotund cheekiness ; others tell a mixed story of joy 
and suffering ; a few ache with ambitions unsatisfied ; 
still fewer awe us by a Titanic distress : but most are 
firm with earnest, resolute convictions spiked with 
will and riveted to the wide aims of continental pur- 
poses. 

Here and there come in faces of great softness, 
sweetness, and delicacy, in which feminine grace and 
dignity are blent so hohly; the mothers, wives, or 
sisters of the men of the Revolution and who kept 
alive in their own loving hearts faith in God, their 
kinsmen, and themselves ; faces which plainly say, 

" This is a haunted world. It hath no breeze 
But is the echo of some voice beloved ; 
Its pines have human tones ; its billows wear 
The color and the sparkle of dear eyes. 
Its flowers are sweet with touch of tender hands 
That once clasped ours. All things are beautiful 
Because of something lovelier than themselves, 
Which breathes within them and will never die ; — 
Haunted, but not with any spectral gloom, 
Earth is suffused, inhabited bv Heaven." 



OLD FAMILY PORTRAITS. 



353 




CHAPTER IV. 

THE STRUGGLE AND FALL OF FEDERALLSM; OR, JOHN 
ADAMS'S ADMINISTRATION. 

1797-1801. 

The Pre-Adamite Epoch: its Upheavals and Disruptions in America, 
and the red-hot diplomatic Stones, Fanchet and Adet, ejected from 
France iipon us. — The new French Acrostics; and the Attempts by 
our Commissioners and Congress to solve them. — Gold-mounted Spec- 
tacles offered us by France ; and our Inability to see our Interests or 
Duty through them. — Why and when the Keel of the American 
Navy was laid. — Of the Alien and Sedition Laws ; why passed and 
how passed by. — General Washington and the Gallic Cock; a Crow 
never crowed out. — Napoleon's Tour in Egypt and Palestine de- 
scribed; and its Results on the Treaty of Peace deduced. — Of the 
Office and Offices of Consul. — A Review and new View of our Dif- 
ficulties with France from 1790 to 1800. — What a Pitt England fell 
into. — The City of Washington as a Geographical Study. — About 
Mississippi, Alabama, and the French Growth of Mobile. — The Ter- 
ritorial Condition illustrated. — The Introduction of Vaccine and other 
Virus. — Why some Things first break out in Boston. — State of Parties 
in 1801. — Why the first Adams was banished from the Presidential 
Eden; and the Flaming Swords which prevented his Return. 

THE elder pre- Adamite epoch in our history was 
past. New, more fiery, and eruptive elements, 
anti-Federal or Republican, upheaving and disrupting 
the old strata below, broke the settled upper crust of 
our political world. 

In France, the Directory of Five, succeeding to the 
Convention, and its powerful national forces, — now 
welded to Napoleon by the fusing heats of Monte 



THE STRUGGLE AND FALL OF FEDERALISM. 355 

Notte, Arcoli, and Eivoli, — ejected out upon us those 
red-hot diplomatic stones, Fauchet and Adet. The 
French conundrums thickened. Genet's successors 
out-geneted Genet. They not only equipped cruisers 
from American ports, but — displeased with a treaty 
which our government had seen fit to make with 
England, stipulating for the neutrality of America in 
the pending war between France on the one side, and 
England, Holland, Spain, and Eome on the other — 
authorized the capture and confiscation of American 
ships. In fact, the French envoys seemed determined 
to show the absurdity of the old-fashioned rule, that it 
took two to make a bargain. 

Mr. Pinckney, the American minister to France, 
was obliged to leave that American paradise, Paris, 
without a fig-leaf of excuse to cover the naked results 
of his mission. 

That comic body. Congress, was convened to look 
into the French conundrums. Of course they talked 
so much that they forgot what they came together for ; 
and no one was any wiser when the speaker's gavil 
fell and sent them home. The puzzled President de- 
spatched three commissioners to get a new statement 
of the riddle. The Directory told these gentlemen 
— as legislative bodies now reply to applicants for 
relief — that they could only see them through gold- 
mounted spectacles. Such a spectacle the American 
people were not prepared to become. Knowing the 
sympathy of the anti- Federal party in America with 
their principles, the French Directory slammed the 
door abruptly in the face of the two commissioners 
with Federal leanings, and held the envoy with Re- 



356 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

publican tendencies, like another Joseph, by his 
skirts. 

In spite t)f party feeling, however, American indig- 
nation now rose to the gorge. A small standing army 
was raised. The keel of our navy was laid, and a Navy 
Department created, over which was placed Benjamin 
Stodart. The alien law, authorizing the President to 
elbow out of the country disagreeable foreigners, and 
the sedition act, to fine and imprison any one writing 
too freely against the government, — measures which 
marked the distance of Americans of that day from the 
political millennium, — were iirst passed by Congress, 
and afterwards passed, without any fear, by everybody 
else. The wise old General at Mount Vernon was ap- 
pointed Commander-in-Chief of the army; and there 
was a fair chance that the American Captain might 
yet be obliged to cut the comb of that strutting French 
cock, which had lately scratched and crowed on so many 
Italian dung-hills that he fancied himself a full-fledged 
eagle. 

Peace commissioners, however, settled the difficul- 
ties, as old ladies do tea, by a long chat around a 
covered table. Bonaparte, who had made a flying mil- 
itary trip to Egypt, had got the Pyramids to look 
down on him from their stony, century-crusted tops, 
while he slaughtered the Mamelukes at their feet, had 
pushed across the desert with the mirage of empire 
ever rising upon his unslaked sight, had made a dis- 
agreeable tour of the Holy Land, and had attempted 
twenty-three times in vain to take St. Jean D'Acre, 
came back to Paris to be made First Consul in De- 
cember, 1799, — a Eoman office, which he filled like a 



THE STRUGGLE AND FALL OF FEDERALISM. 357 

Roman, by subjugating all Europe by arms and inso- 
lence. The gristle of the Corsican had at last stiffened 
into the bone of a ruler of a large, consolidated em- 
pire ; and the concentration of power in his hands 
enabled him to concede to the justice of America what 
the shifting authority of constituted assemblies, con- 
ventions, legislative assemblies, and directories were 
too weak to dare. Bonaparte met the American com- 
missioners around the round table, himself as round 
in power as it in shape, and in September, 1800, gave 
his autograph to a treaty of peace which shielded 
American independence of action from the insults of 
the envoys of a nation hitherto friendly, — a nation 
which had in a timely and efficient way, mainly to 
help itself against an old rival, helped us, but which, 
for the preceding ten years, had claimed, and offen- 
sively insisted in return, not from our gratitude, but 
as a right, that we should give our assistance to their 
ever-shifting schemes, with many of which we had no 
sympathy, and at a time when to furnish aid was 
ahnost to ruin our young strength. 

"While the Frenchman was thus bestriding Europe, 
putting England to her straits, and in fact even to 
such despair as to find relief in the Pitt, our American 
Colossus fell before the only foe which was ever per- 
mitted to be his conqueror. 

Washington died December 14, 1799. 

The year following the seat of government was re- 
moved to the District of Columbia, where, by frequent 
patching since, it has been made to stand much wear 
and tear. The city named after Washington is still 
the greatest atlas in the United States, its large geog- 



358 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

raphy requiring the most patient study to find out 
what one is looking for. Many die without accom- 
plishing it, some by it. The wheel-shaped city has 
rotated off from its periphery so many different officials, 
that, although like a velocipede it is very hard riding, 
it cannot well be stopped without considerable injury 
to its Federal rider. 

The wide region called Mississippi, embracing the 
present State of that name and also Alabama, — the 
latter no longer apprehending any new petticoat insur- 
rection in Mobile from the descendants of the insur- 
gents of 1706, which with French slowness in swelling 
the census had only in ninety-five years become two 
hundred and fifty, and these balanced by an equal 
number of blacks, — this Mississippi region, now sepa- 
rated from Georgia, was put into that pantaleted ter- 
ritorial condition in which a community finds itself, 
like a young girl-lady at sixteen, who goes to school, 
lives at home, is governed partly by herself and partly 
by her parents, acquires pocket-money from the old 
people, and notions from circumstances, and drifts vig- 
orously on through an unsettled perplexity into an 
early and settled independence. Such in this year of 
grace 1869 are Arizona, Dakota, Idaho, Montana, Col- 
orado, 'New Mexico, Utah, and Washington, whose 
quickly doubling populations are rapidly pursuing their 
education through a university where sharp, practical 
studies are urged with bullet speed ; mining silver, 
gold, and lead by day, and spending most of it in 
gambling saloons by night ; rolling their residences on 
wheels from one ranch to another ; practising high 
gymnastics with tlie Indians, by a method better than 



THE STRUGGLE AND FALL OF FEDERALISM. 359 

Dio Lewis's ; taking frequent lessons in bar-rooms, and 
pretty sure to make and be a mark lor some one in 
every quarter. 

It may not be beneath the dignity of history to state 
that, while the new century was inoculated with virus 
taken from various sources, pure and impure, political, 
monetary, and social, its first year witnessed the earliest 
introduction of vaccination for small-pox in this coun- 
try, to which it worked its way four years after its first 
discovery by Edward Jenner in England. 

Of course it first took near Boston, where it has 
since continued to break out in various eruptions, whose 
vesicles, always surrounded by a rose-hued areola in 
the eyes of home nurses, it never allowed any one but 
itself to puncture. 

Meanwliile, however, the political crust, broken and 
cracked in 1797, again heaved anew; muttered thun- 
der rolled off from the press ; party lava reddened the 
sides of the political Vesuvius, over whose cindered lips 
soon poured the hot melted streams of rage, which 
left, as they cooled, nothing of the late Federal party 
but scoria and ashes. 

The first Adams was banished from his much-loved 
Presidential Eden, and a flaming sword with many 
blades^ — alien law, sedition act, personal desire for 
office, supposed sympathy with England, and suspected 
antipathy to France — was set at the door, turning 
every way, and prohibiting his return any way. 



CHAPTER V. 

THK CHIEF AMERICAN PRODUCTIONS OF THE EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

The Cereals and Serials of the last Century. — Hares caught before cooked. 
— Useless Indians put under Ground. — Human Bones the Phosphates 
of History. — The Statecraft of Washington, Jefferson, and Others. — 
The Automatic Workings of Governments exposed. — What small 
Brains rule. — Description of our Government JIachine. — Its Merits 
and Demerits. — The Disadvantages of frequent Changes of official 
Workmen. — How the Machine-Oil is stolen. — The Inventions of the 
Eighteenth Cycle of Time. — An American Noah inebriated by the 
Cotton-Gin. — How Ham laughed and how Japhet put a Blanket over 
the Patriarch. — The Growth "of Commerce. — The Notions which Im- 
portations put in and on the Heads of the Young People. — Paris 
supplies the Mistakes of Niture. — Of Dress. — Hoops, Head-Gear, 
Coats, Vests, Tights, etc., descanted upon. — Improvements in Roads 
and Means of Transit. — The Journey from New York to Boston in 
1732. — The Road-Maker and Vehicle-Propeller as Leaders of Civil- 
ization. — The great Invention now needed. — The Populations of New 
York and Boston in 1700. — Description of the Former in that Year by 
an English Traveller. — Slave-Market in New York in 1711. — Manu- 
factures and their Growth. — The Habits of the Period described. — 
Improvements in Morals, and wherein. — A general Review of Ameri- 
can Literature and Book-Making through the Centurj'-. — The first 
American printed Volume ; and how fast and long it ran. ^ Earliest 
Original Book of Poems ; by a Woman, with a touching Specimen 
therefrom. ; — An Account of the leading Writers on Theologj', Political 
Science, Government, Natural Science, Natural History, of Novels, 
etc. — The American Joss ; its Worshippers, aud their Treatment. 

BEFOEE turning our backs upon the eighteenth 
and leaping upon the engine-driven nineteenth 
century, to be borne swiftly through its rapidly chang- 



AMERICAN PRODUCTIONS OF THE 18TH CENTURY. 361 

ing scenes, it is well to take a hurried glance back- 
ward over the path we have traversed and to pick up 
a few waifs strewn along the wayside. 

The largest American products of the last century- 
were material. Cereals were common and abundant ; 
serials uncommonly few. The Western lobe or half of 
the world's brain did not work so actively as the 
Eastern. Our forefathers were occupied with the ear- 
nest business of first catching their hare before pre- 
paring to cook him. They improved the breeds of 
useless Indians by putting them thoroughly under 
ground. They disposed also of not a few Englishmen 
and Hessians during the last quarter of the century by 
converting them at Saratoga, Princeton, Eutaw Springs, 
Yorktown, and elsewhere into good compost, making 
our soil historically fruitful. 

Human bones are the phosphates of history. They 
quicken a rich heroic growth over sterile soils. Our 
ancestors enriched many American fields in this way. 
It is not Quaker husbandry, and Quaker phosphates 
are few ; but for all that, the seeds which they raise 
and sell never do as well as when sown in these phos- 
phated furrows. 

A large crop of political principles was gathered in 
by such laborers as "Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, 
Jay, Patrick Henry, and others, unpractised in other 
fields, but yet found to be efficient and skilful. They 
learned the old art and mystery of government so 
readily, and showed its workings with such unreserve, 
that statecraft, — which theretofore had been, in spite 
of its pretentious parade, mainly a system of mutual 
imposition and overreaching, — saw itself suddenly 
16 



862 TEE come HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

exposed to popular inspection, and made a subject of 
vulgar, eveiy-day comment. Like the automatic 
chess-player, which seemed such a mystery in its 
curious, systematic, intelligent work, these old auto- 
matic, governmental machines were found to be con- 
trivances, very common when taken apart ; in fact, 
like the wonderful chess-player, kept slyly in motion, 
by a very ordinary chap, boxed up inside and moving 
from his hidden quarters, springs invented by a 
person whose name was concealed, and which kept 
the pieces going just as well as if the operator had a 
brain to work with. The machine which our fore- 
fathers finished in 1789, — scorning to take out a 
patent for it, or in any way to make it exclusively 
their own, — apparently complex but reaUy simple, and 
open to inspection in all its parts, consisted of a stiff 
popular main-spring, distributing its propelling forces 
through primary wheels and political chain-work, 
which runs from the main wheel to smaller state 
wheels, and so back and through governors and assem- 
blies of ingenious cogged and racket motions, securing 
thus a free yet regulated movement to all the parts. 
It is a good machine, although operated at a great dis- 
advantage by reason of the frequent changes in the 
hands employed, who have scarcely time to learn 
their business before they are required to give another 
set a chance. It is inexpensive, notwithstanding that 
some of the workmen are learning the kingly trick of 
considering as their own a good share of the oil which, 
in fact, belongs exclusively to its owners, and is in- 
tended only to keep the machine running. Of course 
foreisners found not a little fault with this American 



AMERICAN PRODUCTIONS OF THE 18TH CENTURY. 363 

product, alleging defects which seem very great when 
viewed under European lights. At first they exj^ressed 
as many objections to it as the cotton-planters to 
"Whitney's gin ; but it is now very manifest that, 
while taking exceptions to the political machine, these 
foreign gentlemen have copied the planters' example 
of getting up, as soon as they conveniently could, very 
palpable imitations of the deprecated plan. 

Among the mechanical inventions, the gin for clean- 
ing cotton-seeds out of the white tangle, combing the 
shock head of the old king, and thus making him at 
once a power and a presentalDle personage among other 
self-constituted sovereigns, — an invention wrought out 
in 1793 by a cute Yankee, — was one which, in its 
results directly on the material, and indirectly on the 
moral, condition of the United States stands emi- 
nently foremost. By the old hand-picking process, 
the slave had his hands full to separate the seeds from 
a single pound of cotton a day. The new mechanical 
picker cleaned six thousand six hundred pounds within 
the same time. The gin so intoxicated the planter, 
that he committed all sorts of political extravagances 
and uttered many maudlin ejaculations, until finally, 
in 1861, he threw himself down upon a bed of 
3^400,000 bales in the condition of Noah when, after 
the flood, he became very hilarious in the presence of 
his children. Ham laughed exceedingly at the specta- 
cle of the American Noah ; but Japhet, after allowing 
the drunkenness four years to cool, at last put over the 
offensive nakedness a large patch-work blanket, recon- 
structed at a quilting-match in Washington. It is 
expected that hereafter his majesty will wear colors 



364 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

of a faster moral hue than before he so abused the 
gin. 

Commerce, no longer tied up to the shore by the 
English navigation acts, began, in the last quarter of 
the eighteenth century, to creep out from the com- 
modious bays and harbors of our long, wavy coast ; and 
soon, not content with these timorous tentatives, put on 
waistbands, top-gallant manners, and flaunting gear, and 
went boldly courting among the wine-cheeked nations, 
the silk-growing empires, and spicy-tongued kingdoms 
of the earth. Importations, of course, not only put 
many new things on, but in, the heads of the emanci- 
pated Americans, who showed their independence, 
then as now, by buying abroad liberally the things 
which they did not make or need here. In spite of 
sumptuary laws, which in some of the new States im- 
posed fines for owning more than one silk gown in a 
family, and which banished jewelry from homes still 
innocent of aught but trinkets that cost less money 
than taste, the beaux and belles of the period whereof 
we speak began to put on hairs where nature had for- 
gotten to furnish them, and supplied from Paris, in 
amounts limited it is true, appliances to remedy defects 
which fashion insisted had been left by the Creator, in 
making up woman from a sleepy man. Hoops every 
few years girdled the larger or smaller conceits of 
Madam Mode's improved figures. Of course Paris 
was always finding mistakes in the original Eden 
pattern ; and her customers were ever ready to try her 
suggestions as to the newest mode of correcting them. 
Top-gears naturally varied like the crescendo et diminu- 
endo notes in music, or the equally flexible bars of the 



AMERICAN PRODUCTIONS OF THE 18TH CENTURY. 365 

gold market, whose undulating lines draw such differ- 
ent tunes from its performers, and sometimes run so 
high as to take away all their breath. Tights, now 
unwhisperable except in veracious histories, held their 
own with elderly gentlemen to the very close of the 
century, and were clasped with silver enough to bring 
a smile, in our day, all over the wrinkling face of the 
Secretary of the Treasury. The wide-tailed coats and 
broad-lapelled vests of the respectable citizens of the 
Washington and Adams periods would, if worn now 
upon the platform of an equal rights convention, make 
the fame of their wearers, and insure full-length por- 
traitures of their inner selves by conversation-drawing 
correspondents. 

Another production of the eighteenth century was 
better material ways for translation over the surface 
of our rapidly augmenting areas. In 1732 enterprising 
stages took fourteen days from New York to Boston ; 
but ere the cycle had rounded up to 1800, the time, 
by reason of better roads, was reduced one half. The 
hard earnings, trickling from the little heaps that labor 
had gathered up, began to flow out into turnpikes ; and 
milestones chronicled spaces and pointed the fingers 
of Time to measures for ascertaining and so accelerat- 
ing speed. The road-maker and the vehicle-propeller 
are the two Dioscuri of modern civilization. Wlioever 
subtracts portions of the earth's surface, be it solid or 
aqueous, from between separated States, communities, 
or individuals, multiplies the well-being and happiness 
of the human race. Could the tea raiser in China be 
placed alongside of the tea consumer in America, or 
the cotton manufacturer of Lowell within a liaK-hour's 



366 THE COMIC HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




AMERICAN PRODUCTIONS OF THE 18TH CENTURY. 367 

delivery of his fabrics from their purchaser, the ex- 
penses of handling at either end, the long, costly, te- 
dious voyages that now waste so much labor, time, and 
money, and the acumulated taxes upon the articles 
sold added by intermediate commissions, would be 
saved. The costs of translation are a necessary but 
onerous assessment upon productive industry. The 
greatest invention now needed is one which would so 
condense the earth's bulk by improved and rapid 
communication, as to squeeze out the distances that 
separate nations and chill their natural outflow from 
themselves into others. 

In 1700 the population of Boston was 7,000 ; that 
of New York 5,250, of which latter one in seven was 
colored; a proportion which was augmented in 1711 in 
favor of the blacks, by the establishment of a regular 
and public slave-market. An English traveller de- 
scribes Boston in 1700 as a place whose "buildings 
are, like its women, neat and pretty ; the streets of 
pebble, like the hearts of the men." From such flinty 
masculines no wonder that the population only reached 
to 24,937 in the next one hundred years. 

Among the leading productions of this century the 
establishment and growth of manufactures must be 
reckoned. Even before the Eevolution, iron-mills at 
Salisbury, Connecticut, at Cold Spring, on the Hudson, 
at Valley Forge and Durham, Pennsylvania, had lifted 
their ponderous hammers to weld the fused ores, 
dragged out of our slightly tumbled beds by cars, and 
had commenced to fabricate instruments of husbandry, 
kitchen utensils, and other tripods on which sat, then 
as now, the Pythonesses of life, who not only inter- 



368 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

pret, but are themselves the oracles of fate. Our 
running streams soon coaxed cotton to take a turn 
around the spindles which Arkwright, in 1768, had so 
taught to whirl with their mechanical iron fingers, that 
one man could work a stubborn iron mule up to a 
capacity equal to one hundred and thirty of the human 
species. The cotton-gin, ere the century closed ac- 
counts with its busy customers, had handed over such 
clean cotton to the coquettish jennies, that very pretty 
yarns began to be spun along many gliding streams. 

The habits prevailing through the eighteenth cen- 
tury were still transitional. It was the chrysalis film, 
covering the flitting worm which had succeeded the 
inert and slow-moving grub of the seventeenth, and 
which was soon to burst into the gayer, full-winged 
buttei'fly of the nineteenth cycle of time. What hab- 
its they had were of solid silver. The platings, spread 
over and hiding darker substances with polished sur- 
faces, were not yet invented. 

Morals, too, triturated by the ever-restless surges of 
time, like the pebbles on a shore which the industrious 
ocean ever scrubs and washes, became rounder and 
smoother, and lost something of those angular asperities 
which added nothing to their usefulness or strength. 

If we take an account of the purely intellectual and 
literary stock on hand in America at the close of the 
century, we shall find that, while the one hundred 
years had been run on a slender and mainly upon bor- 
rowed capital, there were results in fabricated stuffs 
by no means discreditable, and in raw material a mass 
very pleasant to contemplate. To a large extent our 
literary manufactures were still imitations of English 



AMERICAN PRODUCTIONS OF THE 18TH CENTURY. 369 

styles, with an increasing tendency to introduce Amer- 
ican figures in the patterns. The first literary effort 
was in hymn and psalm books. The very first volume 
printed in this country was " The Bay Psalm-Book," 
published, of course, near Boston (at Cambridge) in 
1640 ; rather slow in metres, but which, before 1750, 
had run through seventy editions, — run in fact so well 
and fast that, like certain plays now, it forgot how or 
where to stop. Singing-books, as an intellectual circu- 
lation, thus went to the American head, and, without 
blowing the matter too much, we may reasonably 
assume that this tendency set up the American nose 
as an instrument of psalmody. 

The first book of original poems was by a wonfan, 
Mrs. Anne Bradstreet. The third edition came out in 
Boston in 1758. Besides this intellectual progeny, she 
had eight children ; and to these latter she thus alludes 
in the printed issue : — 

" I had eight birds hatch't in the nest; 
Four cocks there were and hens the rest; 
I nurst them np with pains and care, 
Nor cost nor labor did I spare, 
Till at last they felt their wing, 
Mounted the trees and learned to sing." 

During the first half of the century, ecclesiastical 
and religious writings in all departments naturally 
took the lead, as in these American mind was left free. 
In this field roamed the two Mathers, father and son, — 
Increase, tlie first, but unfortunately not the last, who 
was created a D. D. ; and Cotton, who committed 
nearly three hundred and eighty-three sins in as many 
books, with which he loaded down the world, the great- 
est like its title, Magnalia. He made a partial atone- 
16* X 



370 THE COMIC fflSTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

merit in a few good treatises. In the same department 
wrought largely, and with a "Freedom of the Will," 
Jonathan Edwards, of whom Dugald Stewart said, 
"that in logical acuteness and subtHty he did not 
yield to any disputant bred in the universities of Eu- 
rope " ; Samuel Johnson, the first president of Colum- 
bia College, and the father of that highly respectable 
family, the American Protestant Episcopal Church; 
Ezra Stiles, who delivered orations in good Latin, and 
found audiences to listen to them ; Timothy Dwight, 
his successor as president of Yale College, whose 
"System of Theology" still claims attention, even 
among the acute researches of the bibliologists of our 
time, and whose four volumes of "Travels in New 
England and New York " give rare reading on express 
trains; Samuel Hopkins, Joseph Bellamy, William 
y White, the first American bishop of the Episcopal 
Church, and whose sweet spirit perfumed even his 
controversial writings; Edward Payson, Joseph S. 
Buckminster, and many others ; — of but few of whom 
it could be said, " that their works do follow them " — 
to silence ; for the churches still hold them in living 
honor. 

Political writings divided with the theological the 
public mind as soon as government became domesti- 
cated. In books like " The Federalist," " Notes on 
Virginia," " Discourses on Davila " ; in speeches em- 
bedding constitutional argument ; in treatises, tracts, 
and in all forms and ways known to type, many of 
the wise men of the Eevolution, with James Otis, 
Josiah Quincy, Jeremy Belknap, David Ramsey, and 
others, spake out in varied logic, historical research. 



iaA**"i-£^^^*»^* 



AMERICAN PRODUCTIONS OF THE 18TH CENIURY. 371 

wit, satire, and in captivating dialogue, discussing 
principles of government, political ethics, and social 
economy. 

In the natural sciences, Benjamin FranMin, David 
Eittenhouse, Benjamin Eush, Samuel L. Mitchell, and 
Count Eumford ; in natural history, Cadwallader Col- 
den, Paul Dudley, John Bartram, and Alexander Wil- 
son ; in history, William Stith, Abiel Holmes ; among 
the singing birds, in the same tree with Anne Brad- 
street but on higher branches, Philip Freneau, John 
Trumbull, the author of " McFingal," Joel Barlow, 
who got up "Hasty Pudding," and survived "The 
Columbiad," and Joseph Hopkinson, who salutes us 
evermore in " HaU Columbia " ; and finally, in fiction, 
standing by himself, Charles Brockden Brown, whose 
nine novels in paper covers delighted our great-grand- 
mothers ; — all these were quite equal to the instruc- 
tion of their various audiences, and might, had they 
lived long enough, written something — perhaps sev- 
eral novels each — for the " New York Ledger." 

The last production, whereof we shall speak, was 
that great American Joss, money, which was set up 
as an idol in many households, but which had not yet 
been installed in municipal halls, fashionable churches, 
and State capitals. Beautiful to the sight at first were 
its golden hands and feet, and almost ^kissable the 
wand which it drew before the glistering eyes of its 
frantic worshippers. Of course no one was believed 
then, any more than now, who called attention to the 
cruel steel knives which it hid in its dollar-embossed 
breast, and against whose sharp points he pressed 
those who yielded to his fatal embrace. 



372 THE COMC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




CHAPTER VI. 

DEMOCKACY IN POWER; OR, JEFFERSON'S ADMINISTRATION. 

1801-1809. 

Few Removals by Mr. Jeflferson from the Ungilt, Official Chairs. — Mr. 
Smith gets into the Navy. — Who started long Messages to Congress ; 
and the Difficulty of finding an End to them. — War with Tripoli ; and 
the Complexion with which the Bey ended it. — Decatur and his Med- 
iterranean Travels. — Ohio in 1802. — The early Danger it ran of being 
all cut up into City Lots. — How the Exodus of its Population was the 
Genesis of its Growth. — Of Westering Caravans. — Bonaparte sells 
Louisiana, and what a Sell it was. — How we were saved an extra 
Volume of Supreme Court Decisions. — The Murder of Alexander 
Hamilton. — A Ghost-Story about Aaron Burr. — The public Estimate 
of his Character unchanged by Biographical varnishing. — A South 
Carolina Conceit. — The Play of Lear in Tripoli. — Peculiar Mussul- 
man Habits; the Author of Don Quixote. — Michigan escapes the 
Cuppings of Eastern States. — Her lymphatic Temperament. — Lake 
Michigan as a Breakwater against Chicago. — Burr tried for Treason, 
"not proven" guilty, and sun-endered — to himself. — Of Bonaparte 
and other Usurpers. — The Oldest dislike the Youngest. — History of 
' the Attempts of George III. and Bonaparte to blockade without Ships. 
— Once a Bull always a Bull. — Search of American Ships for Sea- 
men. — The Unwisdom of Half- Apologies. — The American Embargo 
and its Popularity with Unmarried Girls. 

THE advent of the first Democratic brave to the 
dispensing patronage and to the right of taking 
official scalps, was not followed by a general emptying 
of official chairs and the massacre of official enemies. 
The thirty-five ballotings in the House of Representa- 
tives between Mr. Jefferson and Aaron Burr made 
men anxious, not hungry and thirsty. The fair- 



374 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

minded Madison was appointed to the State Depart- 
ment; Albert Gallatin, the golden-mouthed, to the 
Treasury ; and Robert, not John Smith, to the Navy. 
Few changes were made in the ungilt places ; although 
the innocent public of that day were not a little ex- 
cited, at the bare suspicion that a few dozen Fed- 
eralists were removed for their political opinions. 
The guilt of differing politically from the administra- 
tion was not considered by the President so flagrant 
as to be adequately punished only by exile from 
of&ce. 

Upon Mr, Jefferson must, however, be laid the crime 
of beginning the practice of sending to Congress mes- 
sages in writing, — a beginning which, like the mes- 
sages themselves, seems to have no end. Since the 
flood human life is far too short for these Presidential 
essays, even without the accompanying documents. 

A war with that dusky corsair, the Bey of Tripoli, 
clouded the very commencement of the new adminis- 
tration, breaking finally, after lasting three years, into 
a heavy shower, February 9, 1804, from the cannon- 
ading guns of young Decatur's ship, the " Intrepid," — 
a shower followed by blue-skied peace. Commodore 
Preble, who with his fleet had been dealing with 
Morocco, assisted in tanning, by some of Bellona's 
bleaching-powders, the sable-peltried Tripolitan. The 
result was that the Bey turned to another complex- 
ion in his treatment of Christian captives. 

In 1802 Ohio doffed the pantalets and appeared 
around the Union board as a full-grown State. Some 
of her settlements had grown so fast, and so threatened 
to absorb the land into building-lots, that it was feared 



DEMOCRACY IN POWER. 375 

for a time that the surface would be insufficient for 
farming purposes. The exodus of population far- 
ther westward, however, relieved the anxieties of its 
genesis, and marked the first chapter of its growth. 
The bivouac that had encamped on her grandly rolling 
rivers began soon to join the westering caravan which 
pitched their tents across the Mississippi against the 
sunsettings. A Hoosier who borrows money at two 
per cent a month to buy land with may be trusted to 
pay it back in a short time. Two to nothing that he 
will add from his generosity a bonus with the return 
of the loan. 

Bonaparte, now Consul for life, and in sore need of 
money, sold to us, for $ 15,000,000, that tract of coun- 
try stretching undefinedly towards the Pacific, and 
called Louisiana. Some of the wits of that day raised 
the question whether the purchase lawfully included 
alligators of such length that they stretched over the 
boundary lines. Neither this great question, nor the 
secondary one of the right of our government to buy 
foreign territory, was mooted in the Supreme Court, 
and thus we were spared an extra volume of majority 
essays and longer dissenting opinions. The foreign 
piU was too sugar-coated to cause any wry faces. It 
was a very big sell — for France. 

In July, 1804, Aaron Burr, Vice-President, murdered 
Alexander Hamilton at Hoboken. Some biographers 
have attempted, since the death of the future exile and 
fugitive from justice, to lighten the heavy burden 
which he carried for thirty-three years afterwards, but 
in vain. The public rarely reverses its first verdict. 
They can seldom be made to believe that its first 



376 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

look at the piece was on the wrong side, and no new 
napping or glossing will convince it that the other is 
the right side. 

The Presidency took such a fancy to Mr. Jefferson 
that, at his re-election, in 1804, he received 162 out of 
176 votes cast ; C. C. Pinckney, Esquire, of South Caro- 
lina getting the other 14. South Carolina then had 
the pleasant little conceit of voting for herself, — a 
harmless pastime that kept up her peculiar idea of re- 
sistance to Federal subjugation, and made a variety for 
the tellers in counting the contents of the electoral 
urn. 

During 1805 Mr. Eaton, the American consul at 
Tunis, made an agreeable arrangement with Hamet 
Caramelli, the legitimate but exiled Bashaw of Tripoli, 
for his restoration to his seat, badly filled by his broth- 
er ; and to carry out the plan, he started from Alexan- 
dria, in Egypt, in company with the sable Hamet, 
seventy American seamen and four hundred and thirty 
Arabs. After traversing a thousand miles of desert 
sands, he fought two severe battles, took Derne, the 
capital city of the chief province of Tripoli, and would 
have deposed tlie cruel reigning Bashaw, and opened the 
prison doors shut on hundreds of innocent Christian 
captives, — Eaton's principal object in the romantic 
expedition, — but for a hasty, jealous, and disreputable 
treaty got up between Tobias Lear, Consul-General of 
the United States, and the Bey, whereby we agreed 
to pay the crowned bandit $ 60,000 in silver, instead 
of in leaden pieces, for the ransom of our sailors en- 
meshed, like flies, in the old spider's web. 

The nation never Hked that play of Lear. They 



DEMOCRACY IN POWER. 377 

always thought of this its principal act, with the Earl 

of Kent : — 

" There is division, 
Although as yet the face of it be covered 
With mutual cunning 'twixt Albany and Cornwall." 

Had these successive and armed protests by America 
against the Barbary habit of enslaving white Chris- 
tian captives, taken in war, been properly seconded by 
the European powers, the dusk Mussulman of North- 
ern Africa would have been then converted from the 
old Eoman practices to which they willingly succeeded, 
— practices which the author of Don Quixote, himself 
an Algerine captive for five years, had punctured 
with his sharp quill over two centuries before, and 
which Lord Exmouth, with a British fleet, so riddled 
with shotted logic, in 1816, as to silence forever. 

"While the play of Lear was so badly acted on the 
shores of the Mediterranean, Michigan, toddling up 
from between the lake coasts that bordered her double 
peninsula, left her ancient name of Wayne County 
and the protecting hand of Indiana, and assumed an 
independent territorial status. Her lymphatic tem- 
perament enabled her to suck up through her many 
aquatic ducts an arterial circulation which helped her 
to stand pretty successfully the dry-cuppings of Ohio, 
Pennsylvania, and New York. In straits often she 
has worked her way with moderate success through 
her Superior Lakes and water-courses to the open paths 
of seaboard trade. The pictured rocks of her great 
northern lake illustrate in lithography, rarely copied, 
some traits which she shares with no others. Fortu- 
nately for her future independence, the intervention 



378 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

of Lake Michigan prevents her territory from being 
laid out in city lots by Chicago. 

The American Cain, restless and uneasy, haunted by 
the pale ghost of Hoboken, set on foot in 1806 an ex- 
pedition designed either to slice off a piece of American 
territory west of the Alleghanies, and to give it as a 
morccau to Aaron the First, to be crowned at New Or- 
leans, his future capital ; or to rid Mexico of a part of 
her troublesome northern possessions and to establish 
over it the dynasty of the Burrs. Tried at Eichmond, 
Virginia, in 1807, before Chief Justice Marshall, he 
had the honor of being enclosed in the superb amber 
vase of Wirt's rhetoric for immortal preservation, but 
the misfortune to be dismissed on insufiicient proof to 
the chained companionship of the dreaded ghost. 

Bonaparte, tired of his consulate for life, and 
anointed Emperor December 2, 1804, by a priest 
whom he called from Eome to Paris for that purpose, 
known as Pope Pius VII., had raised against himself 
and his family pretensions the more ancient usurpers 
of Europe, whose equally bold seizure of the right to 
govern people, and to take their money whereon to 
live in ease, was veiled and historically disguised by a 
few score years of unrighteous possession. Of course 
the ancient usurpers despised and made faces at the 
newest. Armies composed of thousands of common 
people — farmers, mechanics, and poor laborers — pad- 
ded in bright-colored clothes out of moneys borrowed 
on their credit and to be repaid by their children, were 
hurled by these usurpers at each other at Ulm, Aus- 
terlitz, and Jena ; and after the smoke of the shocks 
rolled off, it was found that all the crowned graspers 



DEMOCRACY IN POWER. 379 

were badly shaken up and shattered, and had limped 
aw^ay exceedingly hurt in pride and limb, excepting 
England only, which, mistress of the water by the 
victory of Nelson at Trafalgar, in 1805, thrust her 
hated trident into the face of the master of the land. 
The sea-tossings of the combatants became profitable 
to our neutral commerce, which picked up out of the 
ports of each the articles needed by the other, and 
laid them down on the rival wharves. England had 
become too much of a trader and shopkeeper to see 
such results with complacency, even if, as a bel- 
ligerent, she could not participate in the dividends. 
And so, in May, 1806, she attempted to inaugurate 
against France — in addition to actual hostilities — 
a paper blockade, by declaring, in a weU-sealed and 
highly respectable looking document, about two thirds 
of the Continent of Europe, including the French 
territory and its dependencies, in a state of blockade. 
"Without a blockading squadron to deliver this docu- 
ment and to enforce the blockade, this declaration was 
an empty bravado, and a fraud on the rights of neu- 
trals. This dog-in-the-manger device to stop the 
trade it could not supply provoked the newest 
usurper to a like policy. Napoleon, equally blinded 
by his resentments, and equally unconscientious in his 
handling of international law, issued from Berlin a 
counter document, also well sealed and incapable of de- 
livery, declaring the British Isles in a state of blockade. 
Without ships — those marine constables — to serve 
papers and bring offenders within maritime juris- 
diction, these orders and decrees became mischievous 
threats, making lawful trade piracy, and subjecting 



380 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

neutral merchant vessels to arrest, detention, search, 
and condemnation. England now put forth another 
pretension. As by the feudal law it was held that 
" once a subject always a subject," of course a fortu- 
nate Bull remained a Bull, even when seeking work or 
protection on an American vessel. American ships 
were thus required to stop on the high seas and be ' 
searched for truant English stock. Such a bull Eng- 
land might make of herself; but she was so angry 
as not to see that neutrals would not become such 
silly calves as to be driven off by these big-looking 
shouts. 

The question was sharply stated by the Leopard, 
a British man-of-war, to the Chesapeake, an American 
frigate, on board of which it was claimed were four 
British seamen. The refusal to permit the ship's hold 
to be looked into not pleasing the Leopard, she fell 
unexpectedly upon the little frigate and tore the 
supposed bulls with horny claws out of the grasp of 
the American. The sight offended all America, espe- 
cially as it turned out that three of the four seamen 
were American citizens. 

President Jefferson expressed the national resent- 
ment in a proclamation interdicting all British ships 
entering our ports. Great Britain made another bull 
by half apologizing and delivering up two of the four 
seamen. The lesson of the stamp duties had not 
illuminated the density of George IIL He had not 
learned that half-apologies are confessions of wrong, 
but no atonement. 

Further experiments were mutually made by the 
two enraged fighters on neutral rights and interna- 



DEMOCRACY IN POWER. 381 

tional decencies. In November Great Britain forbade 
any one trading with France; and France, equally- 
enterprising, ordered the stoppage of all trade with 
England. Our government replied to these illegal 
proceedings by an embargo on all vessels in our ports, 
foreign and domestic. From December, 1807, until 
March, 1809, marine beaux were abundant, and young 
ladies joyous. When the embargo was raised the hopes 
of the latter sank. They became more desponding still 
when the government forbade aU commercial corre- 
spondence with France and England. 



CHAPTEE VII. 

THE UNITED STATES AT SEA; OR, MADISON'S CRUISE. 

1809-1817. 

The Captain and Officers of the " Seventeen Sisters " which put to Sea in 
a Gale. — Diplomatic Talks. — Difference between one's own Cows 
gored, and one's own Bull in a Neighbor's Field stoned, exemplified. 

— Cave canem. — Bonaparte improves the Code Napoleon. — Execu- 
tions before Trials. — Horace Greeley fights benevolently into the 
World. — Louisiana and her Vivacious Debts taken in; what sweet- 
ened them. — Witch-Hazel Rods of Clay, Cheves, etc., dip to the Na- 
tional Mines of Feeling. — Our Second Wrestling-Match with England. 

— The Hull-sale Surrender of Michigan. — Colonel Cass breaks his 
Sword, and gets an Anglo-phobia. — Better Hulls on the Water. — 
America man-ies the Sea. — A Wasp on a Frolic. — Marine Flirta- 
tions and Engagements. — The Constitution, an Old Sea-Flirt; her 
rapid Winning and Wooing of the Java. — South Carolina loses a Presi- 
dential Candidate. — Of the Three Armies afield. — Harrison at Tippe- 
canoe and the Thames. — Colonel R. M. Johnson's life-long Chase for 
Tecuraseh's Scalp. — Toronto emptied and filled. — General Brown, a 
Real Man, in Spite of his Name. — General Wade Hampton. — Coiirt- 
Martials, and how they touch off Military Charges. — The United 
States at Sea on Land. — The Hornet on a Peacock. — An Immortal 
Word wrung from a Mortal Moment. — Commodore Perry. — General 
Scott improves the Niagara Frontier for Hack-Drivers. — Macdonough 
charges Lake Champlain with Heroic Ingredients. — English Marine 
Parades. — Cotton Breastworks at New Orleans. — Their Feminine 
Adoption. — The Treaty of Peace and its Wonderful Omissions. — 
Costs and Gains of the War. — The Hartford Convention and its Eques- 
trian Exploits. — Mr. Calhoun and Invisible Ink. 

JAMES MADISON", who for eight years past had 
been first mate on our national craft, was in 1809 
promoted by its owners, the people, to be Captain, — 



THE UNITED STATES AT SEA. 383 

Mr. C. C. Pinckney, of South Carolina, receiving a com- 
plimentary vote, as a Palmetto fillup. The captain's 
principal officers were : first mate, or Secretary of State, 
Eobert Smith ; second mate, or Secretary of War, Wil- 
liam Eustis ; purser, or Secretary of the Treasury, Albert 
Gallatin; boatswain, or Secretary of the Navy, Paul 
Hamilton ; and Csesar A. Eodney, piper, or Attorney- 
General. Much need was there of a judicious set of 
officers on the quarter-deck, as well as of a good crew in 
the forecastle ; for the Seventeen Sisters were about to 
put to sea, with high storms blowing off and on the coast. 
Much talk was there,, as soon as Mr. Madison en- 
tered upon his duties, between British envoys, Mr. 
Erskine first and Mr. Jackson afterwards, on the one 
side, and our Mr. Smith on the other, about our Non- 
intercourse Act. Of course the Britons did not like to 
have their own commercial cows gored by our bulls ; 
although they had enjoyed immensely the sight of 
their own unmuzzled Durhams pushing wildly among 
our young cattle. The British government — or, rather, 
their accredited agent, Mr. Erskine — promised to re- 
peal the obnoxious orders in council. Taking the 
principals at their agent's word, our government good- 
naturedly proclaimed the renewal of commercial inter- 
course with England. Thereupon, George III. — now 
entering the fiftieth year of king-craft, without any 
improvement of his crass German notions by a cross 
with British principles of shop-keeping — repudiated 
the acts of his agent. The friendly hand we had offered 
we now took back, giving a perceptible contraction to 
its muscles as we drew it in. For three years we 
pocketed our fists and indignities. 



384 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

In 1809 England had stationed cruisers off our 
coast to seize our mercliantmen, and send them in as 
prizes to her ports. Every American ship-owner saw 
mosaicked at the outlet of every American harbor the 
warning, cave canem, without being at liberty to stone 
the dog which ilew at him. Bonaparte, blood red with 
Spanish and Portuguese victories, turning in cold, 
dynastic selfishness from the heart-faithful but child- 
less Josephine, and drawing to her place the reluctant, 
refrigerating Maria Louise, undismayed by the fear of 
our junction with the fifth coalition formed against him 
by England, Austria, Spain, and Portugal, imitated for 
a time the swaggering injustice of England towards us. 
In March, 1810, improving upon the Code Napoleon, 
by execution before suit, he decreed the seizure and 
summary condemnation of aU American vessels enter- 
ing French ports. This boyish, pouting, and self-ex- 
tinguishing policy he gave up in November following. 
England was left alone in keeping unneighborly mas- 
tiffs. 

Meanwhile, in the midst of the effervescence of na- 
tional sediment thus foaming up in yeasty ebullition, 
Horace Greeley, February 3, 1811, fought into life. 
Ever since that successful contest, the world has ad- 
vanced with quickened forces. Benevolence felt rein- 
forced by combative intellect, which borrowed the 
club of logic and strong adjectives to persuade error to 
keep the ways of tribunitial thought. Soon after Mr. 
Greeley's birth, Mr. Smith gave up the State Depart- 
ment to James Monroe, who, for the three years fol- 
lowing, found ample employment for his executive 
abilities, in the double duties of this branch added 
to those of the War bureau. 



THE UNITED STATES AT SEA. 385 

In April, 1812, our French sister, Louisiana, brought 
her vivacity, gayety, and debts into the family. Her 
high spirits were needed to stimulate the action, and 
her sugar to sweeten the waters of strife, now effec- 
tually stirred between America and England, whose 
bottomless pretensions had become intolerable. Our 
public debt had become reduced to about $45,000,000, 
and our population augmented to seven and a half 
millions. It needed not the witch-hazel rods of the 
eloquent Clay, Calhoun, Langdon, Cheves, and others, 
to dip to and find the mines of national wealth and 
national feeling. Both were ready. At last, June 4, 
1812, after the lapse of twenty-nine years, we found 
ourselv^es in a second wrestling-match with Great Brit- 
ain. Our first grapple was near Detroit, and on the 
Canadian frontier, where a defeat, under Colonel Van 
Home, and a success, under Colonel Miller, equalized 
losses and gains, through July and August. But the 
base Hull-sale surrender, without a blow, of Detroit, of 
an army of two thousand men, and the entire Territory 
of Michigan, by its cowardly or treacherous governor, 
caused our captain, officers, and entire crew to explode 
in very indignant terms. Colonel Lewis C!ass, then 
commanding one of the regiments, snapped his sword 
in two pieces, rather than surrender it whole to the 
British General Brock. He took such an Anglo-phobia 
at this time, that the next fifty years could not cure it. 

Fortunately we had better hulls on the water than 
on the land. 

August 19, 1812, Captain Isaac Hull, in the frigate 
Constitution, fought the British Guerriere, and after 
knocking down every mast and spar and one third of 

17 Y 



386 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

her crew, compelled her to throw up the sponge. The 
mourning put on three days before for the loss, by- 
General William Hull, of Michigan, and the army of 
the Northwest, was now put off for the bridal-WTeath 
presented by Captain Isaac Hull to America, on her 
marriage to the sea. Like her spouse, the Ocean, the 
bride hastened to cast her weeds. The pallor of de- 
feat gave place to the summoned roses of joy. Upon 
the crimson flushes the British bees now sought to 
light and to extract their carnation. 

In October, the British tars, in a Frolic, set out to 
tease the delighted groom, but a Wasp, hovering near, 
made for the frolicsome bee, and in three quarters of 
an hour so stung it, that its shattered wings were only 
fit for microscopical studies. All the officers and crew 
of the Frolic, four only excepted, were killed or 
wounded ; while the Wasp, although carrying fewer 
guns, had only ten killed or injured. A few days 
afterwards the frigate United States, commanded by 
Decatur, — whom we left eight years since before 
Tripoli, clearing out its wretched Bey, — engaged the 
British Macedonian, and took such a fancy to her that, 
after some violent flirtation, she completely won her. 
This engagement went hard with the proud, stiff old 
people in England, but a repetition of this sort of 
match-making did much to reconcile them to the first. 
The second engagement took place on Pacific ground, 
off the coast of Brazil, between that old sea-flirt, the 
Constitution, looking out, not for coffee or sparrows, 
but for a marine flirtation, and the Java, a buxom 
frigate, long-waisted and well padded with materials, 
adorned with heavy war jewelry, constituting very at- 



THE UNITED STATES AT SEA. 387 

tractive charms, at her waist. In less than two hours 
after their acquaintance, these ardent strangers became 
so entangled in each other's fortunes, that the Java 
gave up, like a true mistress, all her future to her fond 
and persistent lover. When the news of this wooing 
reached the stuffy old parents at home, they were fran- 
tic with rage. The family pride was alarmed and 
wounded. They immediately sent out a large fleet to 
watch that new and fashionable American promenade, 
the sea, to prevent any more flirtations and engage- 
ments like poor Guerriere's and the unfortunate Java's. 

Meanwhile Mr. Madison was re-elected Captain by 
one hundred and twenty-eight votes ; De Witt Clinton 
receiving eighty-nine. Mr. C. C. Pinckney, now sixty- 
six years old, and convinced that his capital was too 
small, abandoned the l}iisiness ; and as Mr. Calhoun 
was yet only thirty, and constitutionally ineligible, 
South Carolina was reduced to the humiliation of 
voting either for a Virginian or a New-Yorker. 

Notwithstanding her successes on the water, America 
by no means abandoned the land. 

She raised and set on foot, although some of course, 
as usual, got on horseback, three armies. The first 
of these was the Army of the West, under General 
William Henry Harrison, whose business it was made 
to chastise back into submissive quiet the Indian tribes, 
which England had enticed out to the pillage and 
harrying of our frontier settlers ; a business which he 
successfully prosecuted at Fort Meigs, at Tippecanoe, 
and again, in October, 1813, at the Thames. At this last 
engagement somebody killed Tecumseh, and thus gave 
Colonel R. M. Johnson employment for the rest of his 



388 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

life in vindicating his right to the Shawnee's scalp. 
The red chief thus, like Homer and others, caused 
after his death more contention than during his life. 
Soon after the Thames battle. General Harrison re- 
paired to Buflalo, where, in consequence of some un- 
explained reason, — perhaps overcome by its vigorous 
Board of Trade, or seized by its enterprising forwarders, 

— he was transported into a resignation, and to Ohio. 
The second army was that of the Centre, under Gen- 
eral Dearborn, Jefferson's Secretary of War, and now 
Commander-in-Chief of all the forces deployed along 
the southern shore of Lake Ontario and the Il^iagara 
frontier. A portion of this army, in April, 1813, left 
Sackett's Harbor, and landing at York, now Toronto, 
took hold of it, and, shaking it empty of British and 
Indians, left it so dry, that vigorous drinking since 
has scarcely suflBced to absorb back any considerable 
numbers of the brick-colored originals, although some- 
thing has succeeded in getting up very successful 
exhibitions of English red and white skins. Wliile 
General Dearborn was absent from Sackett's Harbor, 
Sir George Prevost thought it a good time to sail in. 
He landed with one thousand men; but General Brown, 

— a real, actual man, although disguised by this myth- 
ical name, — rallied the local militia, and, setting on 
the baronet and his thousand, took a large number 
of them, and held them as mutilated specimens of 
soldiers at leisure. General Dearborn soon after re- 
signed, and General Wilkinson — who had been tried 
and acquitted for his too great intimacy, while in com- 
mand at the Southwest, witli the American Cain and 
his schemes — succeeded him ; the only success that 



THE UNITED STATES AT SEA. 389 

he ever had, as he always had the ill-assorted habit of 
never agreeing or co-operating with any one, especially 
on critical occasions. Like a rocking-chair in movinir 
time, he took up more room than could be spared, and 
was pretty sure to be broken when required for use. 

The third army was that of the North, placed under 
General Wade Hampton, grandfather of that leader of 
the Confederate black cavalry in the late Eebellion, 
who waded to his horse's bits in the blood of his loyal 
countrymen, in order to keep the black bipeds in 
the South bridled and saddled to carry the unwading ' 
Hamptons. The army of the North, twelve thousand 
strong, was stationed on Lake Champlain, and was 
destined to co-operate with Wilkinson's for the reduc- 
tion of Montreal, then holding only a small garrison 
of six hundred; but the mutual enmity of the gen- 
erals, growing out of old quarrels at New Orleans, 
frustrated all co-operation. Each drew himseK into 
warm winter quarters, nursing his private grievances, 
as Mrs. Gamp did her special infirmities, while the 
poor imnursed, suffering patient, the campaign, took 
care of itself. Of course Montreal was not reduced, 
except to a satisfactory smile over the military pouting 
of the unco-operating commanders. The Secretary of 
War preferred charges against Wilkinson. The charges, 
as usual when touched by court-martials, went off in 
flashes in the pan. The campaign of 1813, rammed 
down with the double loads, the armies of the Centre 
and the North, went off in the same way. 

The United States were now more at sea on land 
than on the sea itself 

Early in the year 1813, the sloop Hornet, roaming at 



390 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 










THE UNITED STATES AT SEA. 391 

will over the green fields of water, pricked on by Cap- 
tain James Lawrence, lit on the British Peacock, and 
so worried her, that in fifteen minutes she fluttered 
down, down into the opening green gulfs below, with 
aU. her bright, well-spread colors. Promoted to the 
Chesapeake, manned or rather unmanned by an un- 
drilled, miscellaneous crew which had drifted on her 
decks, the brave Lawrence, counselled more by a chiv- 
alric honor than by a cool prudence, accepted the mur- 
derous, Burr-like challenge of the well-practised Shan- 
non, carrying a picked and veteran crew and corps 
of marines. The ill-handled, entangled, and disabled 
Chesapeake was boarded, and the intrepid commander, 
carried below with a mortal wound, stammered out 
that immortal order which hurtles hotly through histo- 
ries and navies, "Don't give up the ship." 

On Lake Erie, Commodore Perry, in September, 
1813, with a small squadron embraced and took a su- 
perior British fleet, announcing his resisted possession 
in another lively, well-planted message, which floats 
like a buoy in the crowded harbor of historical anchor- 
age, — " We have met the enemy and they are ours." 

During this year, as in the preceding, American pri- 
vateers swept from the wavy floor of the ocean hun- 
dreds of merchantmen. Forthwith English courts, 
English premiers, and English writers on interna- 
tional law bristled with freshly sharpened horror at 
the sin of privateep'^ag. -7- a most un-CIiristian practice 
they averred, as it tended violently to abridge the ma- 
rine wealth of England. 

In 1814 a varied war business was ii-ansacted be- 
tween the United States and Great Britain, lii July 



392 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

— that montli for excursions to Niagara Falls — Gen- 
erals Scott and Eipley crossed the hurrying river near 
the cataract, and took Fort Erie, which, fortunately for 
the hackmen, they left like a toll-gate, to entice yearly 
from travellers its original cost. As if to increase the 
wonders of this taking neighborhood, two days after 
the capture of Fort Erie, the battle of Chippewa was 
fought, in which bayonets were actually crossed, — a 
rare checker-work, although often talked of in those 
select romances, the despatches of raw militia gener- 
als, who, in their first sight of glancing steel and first 
smell of villanous saltpetre, see many things crosswise 
and crooked. Fifteen days later, Winfield Scott made 
a ghostly spectacle, at Lundy's Lane, of great numbers 
of well-seasoned British Eegulars. 

Fortunate Niagara ! in owning so many wonders, 

" The moving accidents of flood and field." 

Human phosphates are here most advantageously di- 
luted with large parts of uncounted water. 

Meanwhile, the veteran English squadrons which 
had served under Wellington, in Spain and Portugal, 
glorified by victories over Ney, Massena, Marmont, 
Soult, and Joseph Bonaparte, — their buUet-slitted 
flags inscribed " Torres Vedras," " Talavera," " Ciudad 
Eodrigo," " Almeida," " Salamanca," " Madrid," and 
" Vittoria," — mustering fourteen thousand men, and 
led by Sir George Prevost, pushed t ov/n from Canada 
upon Plattsburg, where General Macomb had assem- 
bled fifteen hundred men. Crossing the little river 
Saranac, on one side of which Plattsburg stood, in mod- 
est, village quiet, Macomb posted his men. Like cedar 



THE UNITED STATES AT SEA. 393 

posts, these unseasoned troops stood rooted to the 
soil, stubbornly refusing to bend before the furious 
storm of grai:)e and canister which swept through 
them for four days. While this heroic endurance was 
maintained on the land side, in front of the village and 
on the vitreous surface of Lake Champlain, Command- 
ant Thomas Macdonough, on the morning of Septem- 
ber 11, with a squadron of fourteen small vessels, 
carrying 86 guns and 850 of&cers and men, anchoring 
in the bay and awaiting the approach of a British 
fleet of sixteen ships, with 95 gims and 1,000 men, 
so charged the common trading waters of the lake 
with soul-lifting influences, that even commerce seems 
to bear there its pennons more stiffly ever since, and or- 
dinary smacks to kiss the wind with a lover's trancing 
relish. 

Worsted in square fighting, squadron to squadron, and 
vessel to vessel, the enemy — not having the fear of this 
History before their eyes, and finding it easier to ha- 
rass unarmed merchantmen and to pillage unprotected 
coasts — ravaged the Cliesapeake, burned the Capitol at 
Washington, — whose corner-stone had been laid by the 
great American himself in 1793, — and laid in ashes 
the President's house. Unfortunately, the Washing- 
ton Monument was not yet begun ; and thus by its. 
escape made the destruction as unpardonable by taste 
as it was by the code of nations. Baltimore pluck 
defended Baltimore beauty from attacks by land and 
water ; but the dry goods and shipping of Alexandria 
were bravely captured and taken prisoners. Weary 
of the marine parades before New York, Newport, 
and Stonington, at the North, and Mobile, at the 
17* 



394 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

South, a descent upon the city of New Orleans was 
finally planned by the British military commander, 
with fifteen thousand hardy and well-seasoned vet- 
erans, led by Sir E. Pakenham. To two thousand 
of them it was a sudden descent to Avernus. Their 
shades, on every recurring 8th of January, have 
since been vexed by the sad rites of oratory, poured 
out on every American stump and platform. Cot- 
ton for the first time was here invested with bel- 
ligerent rights, from its use by General Jackson and 
his six thousand troops as breastworks. It has ever 
since been roundly employed by American ladies in 
the same way against their ardent admirers. The 
result in the latter case, however, has usually been, 
not to repel but to heighten the vivacity of the 
attack ; and, unlike that at New Orleans, to procure 
the surrender of the party with the cotton- works. 

The battle of New Orleans was fought in ignorance 
of the treaty of peace between the United States and 
Great Britain, signed twenty-five days previously, 
December 14, 1814, at Ghent, — an agreement which, 
like frequent make-ups of other quarrels, was wholly 
silent upon the questions which had caused the long 
and harassing contention. 

On these questions the United States were left at 
sea. 

The war had cost thirty thousand lives and over 
$ 100,000,000 ; but we gained flags, fame, self-confi- 
dence, a fine crop of candidates, and subjects for 
speeches. Through the annealing flames we came 
out blue steel. 

During the December descent on New Orleans, 



THE UNITED STATES AT SEA. 395 

delegates from five of the New England States took 
Hartford and used it to pass some resolutions against 
the mode in which, as they asserted, those States had 
been left out in the cold, bare and unprotected by the 
government. Many conventions have been since held 
at the same place and gathered up denunciations with 
characteristic American fervor; but this one has got 
somehow astride of history, and ridden it without 
bridle or stirrups. 

In 1816 the second national bank was chartered, 
with a capital of $35,000,000, lifting the country 
from suspension to specie payments. Mr. Calhoun, 
its projector and the supporter of a high tariff, lived 
to denounce both. Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster, his 
triangulating rivals, also survived to balance with 
changing faces the changed front of their Presidential 
competitor. The strong heats of party, in all times 
and countries, bring out characters and lines invisible 
before. 

In December, 1816, Indiana, the nineteenth State, 
came to Washington bearing in her hands a-maize-ing 
reasons for her admission. 



CHAPTER VIIT. 

THE ERA OF GOOD-WILL ; OB, MONROE'S NESTING^ 

1817-1825. 

Why BjTon did not write sometimes. — Application. — Rainbow after 
the Shower. — The Happy Family. — An Inlaid Cabinet. — Virginia's 
Dower Rights in.the Presidency. — Five New States. — The Three 
M's. — Proof from the Census of 1820 that Chicago had not started. — 
The Missouri Compromise. — A Good Bridle until used. — Florida 
bought in 1819. — What we got over the Bargain. — The Florida 
Keys. — The Dry Tortugas thrown in. — The Dews fortunately left. — 
A Cracked Cup in the Family Cupboard. — The Monroe Doctrine. 

" "\ X 7" H Y do y oil not waite now ? " inquired a friend 

V V of Byron in one of the fitful pauses of his 
galloping author life. 

" Because I am happy now." 

So reply the uneventful, unproductive felicities of 
Monroe's term to the distressed hunter after historical 
sensations. 

After the showery storm of Madison's aquatic epoch, 
rainbows came out in millennial blendings. Warm sun- 
shine lay upon all the land. Under it the happy 
family dwelt in peace. Federal and Republican inlaid 
the Cabinet. Virginia was satisfied with the fourth 
President. She had got her thirds. The humble 
eighteen others believed in Virginia Presidents. They 
were content. It was Solomon's reign of peace para- 
graphed between David's wars and Rehoboam's troubles. 



THE ERA OF GOOD-WILL. 397 

Five Territories took advantage of the open doors to 
step into family relations. Among the five were the 
three leading M's, Maine, Mississippi, and Missouri. 
Chicago — we mean Illinois — took the year 1818 to 
enter. Of course Chicago had not yet begun, for in 
1820 the census only showed 9,638,191. 

The keeper of the happy family was re-elected in 
1820. There was only one vote against him, — a lit- 
tle mistake or eccentricity not worth inquiring into. 
There was a little shimmering over the calm surface 
for two years, caused by the application of Missouri to 
bring slaves with her into the family. Of course Mr. 
Clay produced a compromise as a settlement in 1820. 
Missouri was allowed slaves ; but thereafter slavery 
was banned from all territory north of 36° 30'. The 
. bridle looked strong when there was no horse. Wlien 
the black charger was brought out and the bridle put 
on, it was found, however, that he leaped unchecked 
over the line. 

In 1819 Florida was boughtfrom Spain for $5,000,000, 
and delivered to us in 1821. We got with it more 
than our bargain, — a lot of very sharp Indian toma- 
hawks. To iDlunt them soon cost $ 30,000,000. The 
Dry Tortugas were thrown in. So were the Florida 
Keys. So were the alligators. Fortunately the night 
dews were left to prevent the peninsula from cracking 
off. Our Union is for better or worse. We took 
Florida in the era of good- will ; we keep it for nothing. 
Among the crockery in the family cupboard an 
occasional cup comes with a cracked handle or broken 
edge. Having little to do at home, our statesmen 
turned their attention to Venezuela and New Granada, 



398 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

then fighting under Bolivar for their independence of 
Spain. Bravely they spoke up for the under cur in 
the fight ; but more courageous still, the President, in 
his annual message for 1823, declared, as a principle, 
in spite of the crowds of colonists to our own ports, 
that no European nation had any right to colonize 
any territory on the Western continent, — a Monroe 
doctrine which, like the laws, is very loud-spoken in 
peace, but very silent in war. 



CHAPTER IX. 

TROUBLES BUBBLE; OR, THE SORROWS OF JOHN 
QUINCY ADAMS. 

1825-1829, 

Parallel between Sidney Smith's Old Razor and J.Q. Adams's Term. — 
How several Gentlemen, touched by Age, reached in Vain after Honors 
too high. — Who they were ; and what Acid Grapes the House of 
Representatives snatched from them. — Pamphleteering and Privateer- 
ing. — An Italian Saying. — Description of a Good Statesman spoiled 
in the Mould of a Politician. — An Illustrative Anecdote. — Partisan 
Scales weighing Public Interests. — The Weights. — The Depravity of 
Political Blunders. — History vs. Party Judgments. 

SIDKEY SMITH once said "that he was Hke an 
old razor, — always in hot water or in a scrape." 
The term of the second Adams had similar agreeable 
occupation. The water was very hot when this politi- 
cal blade was first thrust into it. Mr. Monroe's double 
term was so quiet, dozy, and apparently so long, that 
several gentlemen, outside of Virginia, felt that they 
were growing old, and might, unless they improved 
the chance, easily slip out of it. Besides Mr. Adams, 
there were, as candidates. General Andrew Jackson of 
Tennessee, William H. Crawford of Georgia, and Henry 
Clay of Kentucky ; among whom General Jackson re- 
ceived the highest popular vote, and Mr. Adams the 
next. In the House of Representatives, the ballot 
taken by States gave Mr. Adams 13, General Jackson 



400 THE COMIC HISTOiiY OF THE Ui^ITED STATES. 

7, and Mr. Crawford 4 votes. Each of these was a 
dragon's tooth, which was carefully sown, and pro- 
duced rank growths of sulphur-colored partisans, whose 
drifting seeds grew into poisonous crops all along the 
public roads. Pamphleteering became privateering on 
private reputation. Industrious falsehoods supplied 
for many years the wai^p of history. 

" Si 11071 e vero e hen trovato " was the maxim of in- 
genious and disingenuous fraud. 

Nursed and reared a statesman, Mr. Adams made a 
very poor politician. He could no more run his ever- 
cooling intellect and scholarly attainments into the 
curious moulds of party than he could make Q fit the 
place of A. Worse far, he had such a small organ for 
a heart, that it sent no blood to his cold fingers for 
hand-shaking. He had too much conscience to be 
popular with office-beggars, and not manners enough 
to go around in the country at large. He never stirred 
out of Washington, that he did not tread on some one's 
foot. 

" James," said a father to his malapropos son, " you 
have only two faults ; one is, that you are good for 
nothing before breakfast, and the other is, that you are 
not a whit better after breakfast." So said of the un- 
partisan President his political fathers, the heads of 
committees ; and their opinion outbalanced in the scale 
the petty weights of general prosperity, peace at home 
and abroad, a careful, scrupulous economy, that kept 
the entire expenses of the government below thirteen 
millions annually, and a steady payment on the na- 
tional debt of seven and a half millions a year. The 
friendly blunder of appointing Mr. Clay Secretary of 



TROUBLES BUBBLE. 401 

State was a political crime ; the retention of those al- 
ready in office, political unrighteousness ; the refusal 
to appoint clamorous partisans to paying places, ex- 
aggerated political depravity. History at last inscribes 
over the gateway of his term "Ai-abia Felix," over the 
place where popular misconception and partisan dis- 
appointment had hastily chiselled " Arabia Petrea." 



CHAPTEE X. 

THE AGE OF HICKORY ; OR, JACKSON'S EPOCH. 

1829-1837. 

Military Men, domesticated to Civil Life, like tamed Animals. — General 
Jackson's Camp Traits in the White Den at Washington. — His Prehen- 
sile Habits claw out the Eyes of several Measures. — How he foraged 
on his Political Enemies, and turned his Troops of Friends into the 
Public Pastures. — Lord Palmerston's Remark upon Gladstone ; and 
its American Application. — An Insurrection among the Household 
Cabinet Troops. — How the vigorous Hickory Club, wielded chival- 
rously for a Woman, quelled it. — The President moves on the Bank 
and captures all its Fortified Points. — Chicago starts in 1830. — Why 
it did not overtake and annex the United States. — South Carolina 
threatens Nullification, and is threatened. — Mr. Calhoun violently 
promised an elevated Position between two Posts. Mr. Clay's Com- 
promise. — Horace Greeley starts the First Daily Paper. — Its untimely 
End bewailed in Verse. — Black Hawk caged and shown around. — 
Georgia, the Cherokees and the Supreme Court. — Three Celebrities 
gained by the Seminole War. — Of Arkansas and its Papal Little 
Rock. — Prospects for the Pope when flung from the Tarpeian. — An 
Arkansas Paul preaching in the American Athens and Corinth. — 
Old Hickory and the Nuts left to be cracked. 

NATUEALISTS tell us that certain animals, do- 
mesticated from a wild state, retain some prime- 
val habits so tenaciously as never to shed them ; that 
these animals, for example, never lie down on their 
new and softer beds without turning around and beat- 
ing about as in their forest lairs. So military men, 
tamed down from the independence of camp into the 
regulated routine of civil life, never lose their unrest 



THE AGE OF HICKORY. 403 

in attempting to adjust themselves to their new condi- 
tion. General Jackson carried the defiant bravery of 
his campaigns against the Indians into the white den 
at Washington. He disdained to cover the prehensile 
claws of new measures with the velvet sheath of offi- 
cial prudence. 

Over the eyes of schemes or institutions which he 
designed to scratch out he cast no glamour. 

During his eight years of civil campaigning, he 
stormed several forts that had become mossed by age 
through preceding administrations. His first care was 
to live off the enemy, the Adamites, whose Federal 
offices he took as forage for his own troops of friends ; 
an example from the military code which every suc- 
cessor, civil or uncivil, has unfortunately hastened to 
follow. Lord Palmerston once declared " that Mr. 
Gladstone had not a command of language, but that 
language commanded him." So it has resulted from 
this tough, hickory precedent, that the offices now 
command the government. 

This campaign over, his next exploit was to quell an 
insurrection among the household troops led by Vice- 
President Calhoun, Mr. Ingham, Secretary of the 
Treasury,* Mr. Branch, Secretary of the Navy, and 
Mr. Berrien, Attorney-General. These officers were 
soon cashiered and their places filled by Mr. McLane, 
Mr. Woodbury, and Mr. Taney. The lily-white arm 
of a lady, whose social exclusion from the Calhoun set 
the vigorous old warrior resented, moved the iron 
sinews of the hickory club which cleaned out the Sec- 
retarys' stables. 

The General next moved on the United States Bank, 



404 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

up whose slopes, although jagged with ores and hoary 
with legislative fortifications, he rushed, carrying them 
at all points with a coup de main. 

His first term, however, was made illustrious, not so 
much by these destructions as by the first appearance 
of Chicago. This was in 1830. At this time, fortu- 
nately, the population of the United States had reached 
12,866,020, and were thus saved from being overtaken 
and immediately annexed to that rapid and rapidly 
pushing place. This Northern cosmical event attracted 
less attention, however, because the public mind was 
at last and about this time fixed upon the State of Mr. 
C. C. Pinckney, which, under the guidance of Mr. Cal- 
houn, threatened to exclude the Federal hickory gov- 
ernment from its plantation, unless the Tariff Act was 
repealed. 

The old military chief issued a public proclamation, 
asserting his determination to execute the laws over 
South Carolina, and private threats to raise the main 
nullifier to a lofty post under the government. In- 
deed, he promised to some of his close personal friends, 
with ejaculations truly Jacksonian, to put him between 
two posts for the rest of his life. 

This was the first sprouting of the carefully engraft- 
ed scion of slavery upon the stock of State rights. 

Again, the Kentucky compromiser was ready with 
a harmonizing remedy, which scaled the tariff rates for 
the next ten years, and then planed them all down to 
the horizontal level of twenty per cent. South Caro- 
lina, lying, like Achilles, near her ships, professed to be 
appeased. Mr. Calhoun was saved his hempen eleva- 
tion. 



THE AGE OF HICKORY. 405 

The year following, 1833, Horace Greeley started in 
New York " The Morning Post," the first daily paper 
ever projected, which lived only three weeks, and won- 
dered why it ever lived at all ; 

" Whose all of life, a morning ray, 
Blushed into dawn then passed away." 

The Sacs, Foxes, and Winnehagoes, with tomahawks 
in their talons, and led by Black Hawk, swooped in 
hovering circles around the w^hite chickens of Illinois ; 
but were brought down by those practised marksmen. 
Generals Scott and Atkinson. The old Hawk was cap- 
tured, and shown througli the United States in his 
drooping feathers. In Georgia, on the other hand, the 
whites were the aggressors, seeking to push the Creeks 
and Cherokees from their coveted possessions. The 
Indians fled to the Supreme Court of the United States, 
which bade Georgia restore the poor Naboths to their 
vineyards. The Ahab sovereignty of that State resisted. 
The President refused to interfere. The nullification 
by Georgia of a decree of the Supreme Court, restoring 
Indians to their rights, was, in the eyes of the old In- 
dian fighter, quite a different matter from the nullifi- 
cation by Calhoun-led South Carolina of an act of 
Congress. So far from being a hair-splitter, the General 
could not even see whole shocks, if the poll was long, 
straight, and black. In 1835 arose another Seminole 
war in Florida, caused by an attempt on the part of the 
government to remove that powerful tribe, under a 
mock treaty, somewhere, nowhere, anywhere, so that 
it was west of the Mississippi, and away from pres- 
ent cupidity. On the public debt, now dwarfed 
to $291,089, this war was like an April shower. 



406 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Florida had the satisfaction, for the third time in six- 
teen years, of increasing the obligations of the United 
States for, if not to, her. In this peninsular cam- 
paign, we obtained three celebrities to knob the flat 
surface of our history^ — Generals Zachariah Taylor, 
Je|sup, and Gaines, — gains compared with which 
the loss of life and lucre are not to be mentioned, 
except to stiffen our virtues by reproaching their sug- 
gestion. 

The red tribes began sensibly to experience the truth 
of that sad tradition, which depicts their fate under the 
figure of a spirited bull, Manitou, which, chased from 
Cordillera to higher peak, across plain and river, ever 
westward, stands frequently on his reluctant retreat at 
bay, and tosses in vain from his frontlet the burning 
spears whose arrowy flames the waters of the Pacific 
only can quench. 

After a pause of sixteen years, Arkansas, in 1836, 
strode, bowie-knife in belt, into the American camp. 
With Little Eock for its capital, it bids fair for the 
honor of sheltering the Pope when flung off from the 
Tarpeian at Eome. Its Saul-like Legares, having been 
struck down by miraculous lights since 1861, we shall 
probably see, becoming zealous Pauls, mending apos- 
tolic nets on the Eed Eiver, and preaching to the ig- 
norant worshippers of unknown gods, in the Athens of 
New England and the Corinth of New York. 

At threescore and ten. Old Hickory was trans- 
planted to the Hermitage. The merits and demerits 
of his administration, his political principles and his 
personal character, constitute still the Flanders of 
American parties, over Nvhich much hard swearing and 



THE AGE OF HICKORY. 



407 




408 THE COMIC HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

fighting are still vigorously carried on. The rough- 
nutted tree has been well shaken by friend and foe ; 
and its shaggy fruit we leave to be cracked, at family 
firesides, to season insipid pauses and to flavor uneifer- 
vescing drowsiness. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE DUTCH EEIGN OF MARTIN VAN BUREN. 

1837-1841. 

A New-Yorker reaches the White House, and has Hard Fare there. — The 
Disadvantages of Competition. — A Financial Earthquake breaks large 
Amounts of Crockery. — How much made a Pile in 1837. — The Sub- 
Treasury. — The Connection between long Messages and Anarchy in 
Finance. — Defalcations in Office. — Why an Old Man's House is 
easily robbed. — The Phantom of SlaverJ^ — Extraits de VAfrique. — 
Principles and Goods sold at a Profit. — A Political Trader loses his 
Capital, and gives up Business. 

AT last ISTew York saw one of her citizens reacli 
the Wliite House. Several other gentlemen, 
General William Henry Harrison of Ohio, Judge Hugh 
L. White of Tennessee, Daniel Webster of Massachu- 
setts, and Willie P. Mangum of ISTorth Carolina, were 
each desirous of getting to this favorite inn before the' 
others, and of securing exclusive possession of it. For 
four years the Dutch guest had a very hard time of it. 
All of his disappointed competitors watched him, as 
hounds the fox in his hole, ready for hot pursuit as 
soon as the brush showed from cover. 

A financial earthquake broke through the commer- 
cial crust the first year of Mr. Van Buren's term, shat- 
tering most of the crockery in the great cities, and 
sputtering red menaces of ruin through almost every 
18 



410 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

village and country store. In New York alone mer- 
chants toppled down amid heaps of indebtedness piled 
up to $ 100,000,000, — a respectable pile then, now 
scarcely worth failing for. To help up the depart- 
ing credit, the President recommended the sub-treasury 
scheme, or separate chests for guarding the public 
moneys. Of course this expedient, like all financial 
measures, was Dutch to the people generally, who be- 
came more hopelessly anarchical by the interminably 
long messages, which aggravated their want of ideas, 
and somehow fretfully tangled their losing tempers 
and accounts. 

A few defalcations among public officers chafed the 
popular mind to an illogical but natural irritation. 
They looked upon the guard-houses of the national 
moneys, like an old man's residence, insecure from his 
broken gait and few locks. The dark phantom of 
slavery again flitted over the land, its dusky shadow 
disturbing the vision of commercial and political trad- 
ers. The President had, in liis boresome in-augur-al, 
promised to his Southern supporters, in advance of 
Congressional action, to veto any bill forbidding slav- 
ery in the District of Columbia. Petitions against 
slavery were laid under the table, while speeches in 
its favor were extremely fashionable. Mails at the 
South were opened for the discovery of antislavery 
papers. Politicians perfumed their handkerchiefs with 
extraits cle VAfrique, and Northern merchants on the 
seaboard sold to the South their principles and goods 
at a profit. Still the great trader in the White House 
kept losing his capital. The new war with the Semi- 
noles created bad debts. A proposition for a stand- 



THE DUTCH REIGN OF MARTIN VAN BUREN. 411 

ing army mined his credit. The sub-treasury scheme 
drained specie from the people into Federal pools. 
To Lindenwald he retired, enriched by experience, 
but with his political ballot-paper at a heavy dis- 
count. 



CHAPTEE XII. 

THE HAREISON-TYLER TROUPE; HOW IT PLAYED. 
1841-1845. 

General Harrison's Death and Life-Insurance Companies. — Whig Bank- 
Bills with no Tyler Bodies to suit them. — A Good Flint which re- 
quired a first-rate Gun, Stock, Breech, and Barrel, to suit it. — Defini- 
tion of Crabs, etc. — The Ashburton Treaty. — The Bankrupt Act, and 
whom it helped. — Misfortunes and Fortunes. — Mr. Calhoun's Texas 
Trick. — Diplomatic Magic-Lanterns exposed. — Roman-like Garments 
with Carthaginian Spots. — Florida our Stocking Heel ; how darned. — 
Yarns about it. — Iron Railings as State Corsets. — How the Florida 
Keys might be usefully employed. 

AT the time General Harrison was called from the 
clerkship of the County Court of Hamilton 
County, Ohio, to preside at the People's High Assizes 
at Washington, he li\"ed at North Bend, a very differ- 
ent crook from that of his predecessor. He was sixty- 
eight years of age, and in feeble health ; yet so seldom 
do people die in desirable offices, that any life-insur- 
ance company would have taken his life in a policy 
at the lowest premium. 

April 4, 1841, however, he died. Of course John 
Tyler, the Vice-President, did not. To the subsequent 
regret of his party he lived on — a plane of his own, 
quite apart from the platform upon which he was 
placed by them, and bisected by a Virginia ecliptic so 
oblique that it rarely touched anything or anybody. 



THE HARRISON-TYLER TROUPE. 413 

Mr. Clay and the Whigs tried hard and long to shape 
a bank bill to his amphibious tastes ; but as they could 
not find a body, neck, or feet to suit the bill, they aban- 
doned the study of natural history as illustrated by 
Mr. Tyler. A bank — some bank — he seemed desir- 
ous to have ; because he entertained a profound con- 
viction that a bank was a good place to put a counter 
in. Like the gentleman who possessed a first-rate 
flint, and wished a gunsmith just to fit a good breech, 
lock, stock, and barrel to it, the acting President seemed 
anxious, in his interviews with the Congressional 
banksmiths, to have them fit a good bank, vaults, 
specie, and circulation, to his admirable counter. 

As Cuvier objected to the definition of a crab given 
by the French Academy, namely, " that it was a small 
red fish which walks backwards," as " wanting three 
things to make it correct : first, that the crab was not 
a fish ; second, that it was not red ; and third, that it 
did not walk backwards " : so the leaders of the party 
which elected him found equal fault with Mr. Tyler as 
defining in his own person the name of Wliig on three 
grounds : first, that he was not a Whig in principle ; 
second, nor in theory ; third, nor in practice. 

The original Cabinet members all resigned, except 
Mr. Webster, Secretary of State, who remained to 
complete in July, 1842, with Lord Ashburton, a treaty 
to disentangle our northeastern boundary lines and 
fish lines from the hard knots into which they were 
running. 

A Banlcrupt Act was thrown out by Congress in 
1841, as planks for traders shipwrecked by the tidal 
waves which followed the earthquake of 1837 ; but 



414 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

the principal benefit of the act resulted in throwing 
the stranded fortunes to the of&cial wreckers, called 
assignees in bankruptcy, who secured most of the 
stuff cast upon the shore. In two years this barbarous 
wrecking business was stopped by the repeal of the 
law. 

The principal event of Mr. Tyler's term was the 
successful trick, shown off in 1845 to the American 
people, by Mr, Calhoun, the new Secretary of State, 
by which they were led into the belief that Texas 
was about to pass under an English protectorate. 
Stimulating the national antipathies and cupidities, he 
asked Congress, through Mr. Tyler, to secure the slave 
empire on the Eio Grande. The dark-lantern exhibi- 
tion was successful. Congress passed alternate reso- 
lutions, one opening negotiations with Mexico for the 
impracticable cession of Texas, the other providing for 
its practical annexation. These little State deceits, 
covered at the time with solemn diplomatic care, 
seem very pitiful when historically exposed in their 
pasteboard cheapness and tinselled falsity. The 
Eoman-like virtue of Mr. Calhoun was picked out 
with Carthaginian spots, and his white state toga shot 
with colored figures, that wiU not stand the sun. 
While he would have scorned with his whole nature 
any individual fraud for the personal gain of a fortune, 
he was, like so many other politicians, neither above 
nor below being more than sharp at a party bargain. 

The day before Mr. Tyler went out, Florida came 
into the Union. She is the heel of the American 
stocking, — very much darned and always in need 
of mending. Yarns orange-colored, lemon-hued, and 



THE HARRISON-TYLEB TROUPE. 415 

palm-tinted show in the abundant patching. She 
has been thus far like certain small country places, 
which scorn fences and paint, ready to borrow money 
on any security required, and are always foreclosed at 
some point by mortgages which hurt no one in the 
neighborhood. Iron railing may stimidate her pride' 
and corset up her untidy ways. She wears the keys 
at her girdle, but as yet has forgotten to lock up her 
small politicians and let out her too closely kept 
products. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

POLK'S WHIRL; 015, THE AMERICAN POLKA. 

1845-1849. 

The Floor Committee for the coming Polka described. — History of pre- 
vious Balls, Country Dances, Virginia Reels, Quincy Waltzes, Irish 
Jigs, South Carolina Shake-ups, etc. — General Taylor, his Advances 
and Movements at Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and 
Buena Vista. — How his Partner, the Army, was taken away. — Gen- 
eral Scott among the Mustangs at Vera Cruz, Natural Bridge, Cha- 
pultepec, Mexico, etc. — Of Wool, Kearny, Fremont, and Commodore 
Sloat. — What New Mexico and California added and subtracted. — 
The Mustang Liniment, or Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo. — How the 
Path for the Traditional Sun of Civilization Westward was cut and 
paved. — Revolvers judicially quoted and applied. — Peculiar Fniit 
adorning the Pendulous Branches of Trees in New Settlements. — 
What the Little Trick of the Wizard of the South conjured up. — 
California in 1848 and now contrasted. — David Wilmot raises a Ghost 
which disturbs several Party Feasts. — How the Polka Party broke 
up ; and how it pleased some and dissatisfied others. 

THE committee of the American people, in No- 
vember, 1844, designated new floor-managers 
for the coming season of four years. 

With Washington and John Adams the nation had 
had the old-fashioned, respectable country dance ; the 
up and down, square, staid figures, moving through 
the rhythmic performances and retiring with marked 
dignity. Then came the Virginia reel, led by Jeffer- 
son, Madison, and Monroe, with the same partners 
throughout. The Quincy waltz followed, ending in 



POLK'S WHIRL. 417 

a dishevelled gallop, when the heated dancers were 
led off to chilling ice-creams and whipped syllabubs. 
This was succeeded by a long puzzling Irish jig, under 
Jackson, with a lively and frequent change of part- 
ners and a passionate mixture of feet, heads, and ball- 
room dresses. A Dutch hornpipe led a select party 
through the mazy solemnities, and intermixed fan- 
dango advances and retreats which characterized the 
Van Buren schottishe. Then came the quick-footed 
cachuca, performed by the Harrison-Tyler troupe, 
ending in a South Carolina shake-up, where the 
darkies were the principal performers, although Cal- 
houned white men promoted the dance and took the 
profits of the abundantly patronized bar. The floor 
was now cleared for the polka, an extremely spirited, 
gp^ating series of figures, in which the main object 
was to balance, by rapid dodges and double-shufiling 
whirls, the forcibly acquired colored partner, named 
Texas, with the new incoming free State arrivals. 
The sets were soon formed. President Polk was of 
course head manager, having able assistants in James 
Buchanan, carrying a stately A^ariegated black and 
white rose ; Robert J. Walker, his button-hole adorned 
with a gold-colored treasury ribbon ; William L. Marcy, 
resplendent with a broad crimson war-sash across his 
broad chest ; George Bancroft, in a navy-blue uniform, 
open in front for the ready exit of his never-ceasing 
orders ; Cave Johnson, in mail attire ; and John Y. 
Mason with his narrow cranium transfigured by a 
straitened cross-barred attorney's cap. Southern men, 
North and South, stepped eagerly forward to join in 
the popular dance. 

18* AA 



418 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

General Taylor, a modest young man of sixty-one, 
was directed by the managers to make an advance, 
with a party clothed in the United States military 
dress, to a place on the large floor, chalked out be- 
tween the Neuces and Eio Grande, with a hint 
not to be offensive in his attitudes, but to look as 
disagreeable as he chose ; and that if anybody, espe- 
cially the blanketed Mexicans, who insisted on having 
that part of the large ball-room exclusively to them- 
selves, should give him any chance, however small, 
to fall foul of them, ball or no ball. When one is de- 
sirous of a quarrel he is not usually, especially at the 
Southwest, long kept out of the enjoyment. In April, 
1846, General Ampudia and General Taylor chanced 
to touch each other, and off went the chip from the 
American shoulder. Of course everybody who at 
the North sold goods to the South, and every one at 
the South who possessed a colored brother in fee- 
simple, was indignant about the chip, which for the 
time conveniently represented American honor. 

The national gorge and the price of negroes rose 
simiiltaneously, Fifty thousand men and $10,000,000 
were voted by Congress to iron out the creases made in 
our flag. Of course the young man of sixty-one soon got 
into the adobe-colored tumble which was impatiently 
expected. May 8, 1846, with the aid of 2,300 men, he 
tripped up General Arista ^dth 6,000 men, at Palo 
Alto, and the next day fell violently against him at 
Eesaca de la Palma. The chopfallen Mustangs, pick- 
ing up themselves and their dirtier blankets, made all 
haste to get out of reach of the rough-and-ready treat- 
ment, and sped across the Rio Grande to Monterey. 



POLK'S WfflRL. 419 

But the young man, excited by the jerking mazourka 
step into which the dance now broke, grasped his part- 
ner, the army, around the waist, and llung across the 
opening spaces against the frightened Mustangs at 
Monterey. It was a hard shock, and, of course, the 
sorry-visaged Mexicans were hurled against the wall. 

The floor managers for some reason — some unchari- 
tably thought from envy at seeing the modest young 
man attracting so much admiration — took away his 
partner, and sent it off wdth a younger man, General 
Scott, then only sixty, to another part of the room. 
The figures which he cut with his set of twenty thou- 
sand at Vera Cruz, Cerro Gordo, ISTational Bridge, 
Churubusco, Contreras, Chapultepec, and city of Mexi- 
co, were waltzed with unflagging energy. 

Meanwhile, the young man Taylor, left with only 
4,759 raw troops, was set upon in February, 1847, at 
Buena Vista, by Santa Anna and 22,000 well-baked 
Mexicans. The South American Warwick left 1,500 
men, his carriage, travelling equipage, and the best 
part of himself — bis wooden leg — upon the field, and 
with the fragments escaped southwards. Almost sim- 
ultaneously new-comers were seen flying, in move- 
ments more or less effective, across the room, — Gen- 
eral Wool, w^th 2,900 men, at San Antonio ; General 
Kearny, at Sante Fe, N'ew Mexico ; Captain John C. 
Fremont and Commodore Sloat, in California ; all per- 
forming feats which brought murmurs of applause 
even from trans-sea critics. 

At last the Mexicans gave out, tired and glad to ap- 
ply to tlieir wounds that Mustang liniment, the treaty 
of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, mixed up March 2, 1848. 



420 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

New Mexico and California were, by this treaty, 
added, with eight hundred thousand square miles, to 
our westering borders. Henceforth the Eio Grande 
babbled a bi-lingual story to the Saxon Americans on 
its right, and the mezzo-tinted, mezzo-clad Mexicans 
on its left. The path of civilization, whose sun-lean^ 
ing course through the centuries, from Assyria to 
America, is not unfamiliar to Americans, was now se- 
curely macadanjized by Yankee pavers to the Pacific. 
The Atlantic slopes, of course, were easily turned 
westward, and their readily manufactured fruits rolled 
down into the Mississippi basin, and over its heaping 
rim beyond. Eevolvers were boxed and transported in 
increased quantities to the Southwest, to supply the 
judicial demand ; as every man who takes up govern- 
ment land is liable to sudden litigations, where the 
trials revolve quickly, and cast with fatal speed one of 
the litigants. The wonderful vegetation of this newly 
opened region, gorgeous in tropical luxuriance, was for 
a few years made more remarkable by the human fruit- 
age, which not unfrequently hung suspended with 
impressive weight from the pendulous branches. For- 
tunately these productions are short-lived. They are 
but the morning mists that hide for an hour the mam- 
moth sierras and wide-armed plains, that nurse conti- 
nents and centuries to manly vigor. 

The little Calhoun trick had, quite unexpectedly to 
the wizard of the South, conjurpd up, — not a few paltry 
African patches grinning with ghastly spectres, chained 
in the linked dance of death, — but broad empires brim- 
ming soon with stalwart men and women. Calhoun 
proposes, but conscience disposes. 



POLK'S WHIRL. 



421 




422 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The yellow-fever broke out, soon after the treaty of 
Guadaloupe Hidalgo, in our new Californian posses- 
sion, carrying off people, "not thence, but thither. By 
the side of palace hotels, now gleaming along golden 
bays ; solid warehouses, through whose opened doors 
show the well-stored sheaves of Continental harvests ; 
settled industries that spike the land with stacks, vine- 
yards, mills, and sjjired villages ; palace cars which in a 
week have blazoned their luxurious splendors through 
solitudes threaded only a few years ago by the danger- 
ous blazed track ; and giant steamers wading the Pacific 
Sea, and carrying to the Mongolian empires of the 
Orient a staggering back-load of American products, 
— by the side of these actual marvels, even a score of 
years has made the contrasted early life of the gold 
adventurer, gambling in revolver-furnished tents, dan- 
gerous night brawls, and rude visits of vigilance com- 
mittees, a theme for romance and its twin ally, history. 
It had taken nearly three centuries since Sir Thomas 
Drake proclaimed California the ward of Elizabeth, for 
the North American boy to acquire sufficient courage 
to touch her virgin lips, and claim her in happy wed- 
lock. 

Our New Mexico brought immediate and national 
disturbance. Slavery there was considered objection- 
able by many ; and as soon as Territories were proposed 
to be carved out of those wide limits, the Wilmot pro- 
viso, to exclude slavery from it, arose at the expected 
Calhoun feast like Banquo's ghost, and, disturbing the 
revel, followed with reproachful look almost every 
American statesman. It strode into the Democratic 
Convention at Baltimore, which nominated Lewis Cass, 



POLK'S WHIRL. 423 

and sat alongside of the shivering president and secre- 
taries. It stalked into the Whig assemblage at Phila- 
delphia, which took the young man for its candidate, 
and troubled its peace. Finally, it flitted to Buffalo, 
and made its apj)earance at a mixed gathering which 
presented Martin Van Buren, — now the political friend 
of the ghost, — with just the ghost's chance for the 
Presidency. 

And so the ball and polka party turned out very 
much as other balls. Those who had expected a great 
deal from it did not enjoy it much ; wdiile those who 
had no hand in getting it up had a good time, ate the 
most supper, had the least headache the next morning, 
and often spoke of it afterwards with pleasurable rec- 
ollections. Among the former were Mr. Calhoun, 
Mr. Polk, and the floor committee ; among the latter 
the modest -young man, now sixty-five years of age, 
John C. Fremont, several people who did not part 
their hair in the middle, and a growing set who were 
friends of those who could not divide their crinkled 
hair as yet either w^ay or any way. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ON THE AMERICAN HALF- 
SHELL. 

*rhe contrasted Beginning and End of the Half-Century. — What America 
brought to the New-Year's Day of 1850 in the Raw, and what for the 
Grill of more refined Tastes. — Historical Stews, and their Foreign and 
Domestic Sauces. — What they were. — Attempts at, and Failures in, 
Insurrections in America. — Mechanical Inventions of the Half-Cen- 
tury ; Steamboats, Telegraphs, Reapers, Sewing-Machines, etc. — Their 
Advantages. — Vestments and Investments. — Of Ether. — How Popu- 
lations drifted to Cities. — Chicago bibulous and dropsical. — Public 
Men and their Versatile Principles. — Newspapers and their unfulfilled 
Prophecies. — Plutocracy. — Fashions and their Constancy to Change. 
— The Stormy Petrels of Commercial Disasters. — How Owners turn 
Wreckers. — Profits out of Losses. — Of Merchant Salvors. — The 
Effects of Gold Discoveries in California on Labor, Ladies' Heads 
and Hearts. — Auriferous Marriages. — The Spite of Midas against 
Children. — Ecclesiastical Gardens in America. — The new Mormon 
Shrub of the Genus Polygamous. — Architectural Improvements. — 
American Houses and their Sites. — F.irmsteads ; their Better Com- 
plexion. — The Crops from the National Farms, the Sea and Land, 
in 1850. — Of American Literature, Science, Natural History, The Phi- 
losophies and other Branches of Knowledge, and their Cultivators, 
through the Half Century. — Summary of the Bill of Fare for the 
Repast on the Half-Shell. — Its Character and Critics. 

THE nineteenth century began in America com- 
paratively lean and unfattened, with but sixteen 
States, and a population of 5,305,939. When, on New 
Year's day, 1850, it was taken up from its native beds, 
it had grown to thirty States, and a population of 
23,191,876. It had gathered American history enough 



NINETEENTH CENTURY ON AMERICAN HALF-SHELL. 425 

to be served up in every style to its liuBgry, impa- 
tiently waiting crowds of ciistomers. 

There was still plenty of it in the raw ; heaps of 
materials swimming in abundant liquor ; common work 
at rough, resisting nature, bivalved between the ordi- 
nary shells of laborious days and unwaking, sono- 
rous nights ; good honest-minded rough-handed labor, 
swinging the axe among Western settlements, and 
pricking gold, silver, and lead veins, and draining 
off their arterial currents into Atlantic bowls ; shaggy- 
jacketed enterprise, brave in work, in patience, and 
cheerful endurance, quelling the rebellions of empty 
stomachs, — those quickly rising, wrathful, and speedily 
armed revolutionists, — and subjecting them to serve 
while the wheat ripened, and to wait upon a nourish- 
ing hope ; and ploughmen planting broad and newly 
claimed fields with tasselled banners, and marching 
with their sheaved battalions to take growing towns 
and marts of business. 

" A mighty maize, but not without a plan." 

Others there were drawing fresh, healthy milk, from 
the breasts of buxom mother Earths ; pioneer, shaggy- 
coated energy, East as well as West, South as well as 
North, creating, organizing, and crystallizing around 
nuclei, snatching newly created words, as woman, 
from the ribs of necessities, and planting them amid 
the needs of freshly staked Edens ; new-laid towns, 
from Mdiose hasty nests speculators run cackling ; 
mining villages, planted at sunset out of hand, watered 
by hot whiskeys, stimulated by the guano of revolvers, 
faro, monte, and warmly stirred politics, and growing 



426 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

over niglit into rougli-timbered climbers up and up 
the mountain-side, to look over into the canyon be- 
yond ; hastily lit oil and other speculations, around 
whose flame the idle moths of the pulpit, the bar, and 
the counter fly and singe themselves until they fall 
helpless upon the table of others ; struggling schools, 
churches, seminaries, and charities, reaching upwards to 
the sunlight, growing more graceful as they straighten 
away from their earthy roots, but still raw ; and all 
the many-visaged, polysided life of fresh energy, strug- 
gling for the mastery over the down- wrestled but ever- 
rising work of new soils, wants, and needs, and destined, 
in spite of its great, rude, sinewy strength, to exhaust 
itself upon what time, patience, and long-applied skill 
shall shape into greater symmetry and proportion, and 
then to vanish away into the tomb of all ex- workmen. 
There, too, were heaped up and ready for the grill, and 
for tastes more refined, capital, massing itself into cen- 
tripetal, compacting, aggregated wealth, touching large 
levers that swing inflowing products from port to port, 
across wide-reaching inland spaces, or over high moun- 
tains ; multiform industries, translating and exchang- 
ing, without parallel, the growths of every parallel ; and 
associated earnings of diligent thrift, extracting the best 
notions from hard, quartz-headed mountains. There 
was vivid and intelligent joint enterprise, which plunges 
beneath the waves, and places the sensitive nerves of 
thought below the gambols of the leviathan, for the 
especial benefit of gamblers in bonds, cotton, gold, and 
stocks ; pries open the shut gates of science, and en- 
tices her occult learning to minister to tlie enlarging 
demands of commerce, agriculture, manufactures, and 



NINETEENTH CENTURY ON AMERICAN HALF-SHELL. 427 

trade ; sets in motion the steel fingers which pick, cull, 
card, spin, and weave the cotton, flax, silk, and wool, 
whose fabrics clothe us through all seasons ; quickens 
the spindles, machines, and contrivances — busy every- 
where — which create our necessaries and our luxu- 
rious comforts ; drags our fuel from the tight clutches 
of the mine ; adulterates our food and drinks ; sews 
up our vestments and sometimes our investments, and 
supplies our dwellings with furniture, our stores with 
goods, our fields with mowers, reapers, steam-ploughs, 
and steam-impelling implements, and our grave-yards 
with monuments, hewn by machinery and chiselled by 
the nimble fingers of patented tools. 

Historical stews, too, those fifty years had, of course, 
produced in abundance ; some flavored with British, 
others with French sauces. Domestic ones, too, had 
simmered and sputtered; but, stirred by bayonet- 
shaped spoons, they had so far gone off in smoke as to 
leave only an insipid taste on. the homely palate of our 
peace-loving household. Of these were the Whiskey 
Insurrection in Pennsylvania, and Dorr's Suffrage Ee- 
bellion in Ehode Island in 1842, made of very poor 
materials, and smothered with a rude domestic bread 
sauce, which, more like a poultice for the outside than 
a relishable compound for the inside, soon took away 
the vicious appetite. Indeed, since the Great Eebel- 
lion which severed the long threads that tied us to 
Great Britain, no insurrections have ever had any suc- 
cess in America. Sharp newspaper ^meutes, looking 
like imminent war, yes ; sectional animosities threat- 
ening, like the South Carolina chattering of 1832, to 
embroil a piece of us, yes ; State grievances, bubbling 



428 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

up with heated convention resolves, until the steam 
of revolution almost arose from the agitated surface, 
yes, and often ; and, to quote an example since 1850, 
even a land-wasting war of four years, reducing large 
plantations to cinders, and leaving in funereal gloom 
many hopes and households, — even this, yes; but a 
genuine, earnest, well-founded, and just revolt, rising 
from wrongs and oppressions, and appealing to armed 
manly protest, and resulting in deserved success, never, 
never ! 

Upon the half-shell were served some remarkable 
mechanical inventions. Water raised into steam was, 
in 1806, applied by Fulton to propel the first steam- 
boat over water ; an application never contemplated by 
the Constitution, but which, in spite of the many pri- 
vate constitutions suddenly broken up by it, the appall- 
ing increase in American biographies, and the wreck 
of matter thrown upon life-insurance reserves, must be 
kindly remembered as one of the great benefactions of 
genius to humanity. In 1832 Samuel F. B. Morse 
discovered the mode of electro-magnetizing thought, 
and of ticking down words at places where thoughts 
were seldom spontaneously produced. The wiry tele- 
graph is daily bringing to light other incidental dis- 
coveries, which show how great benefits sometimes 
pendulate with petty remorses. There are developed 
at most stations a class of people, formerly unknown, 
and called " operators," who believe that small acci- 
dents, in places unrewarded by the notice of geogra- 
phers, are national ; that the births, deaths, or marriages 
of owners of petroleum, fast horses, or other rapid stock, 
concern all readers of newspapers ; that the time, age, 



NINETEENTH CENTURY ON AMERICAN HALF-SHELL. 429 

and pedigree of quadrupeds, kept for jumping long 
spaces in a short time, and the weights of bipeds, sent 
to college to acquire an increase of their intellectual 
strength, but who punish instead an ash stick some four 
hours a day, by sweeping with it some frog-pond in the 
vicinity, are vital statistics ; and that the election of 
constables, supervisors, aldermen, mayors, and members 
of Congress are matters which every intelligent patriot, 
instead of banishing from all recollection as speedily as 
possible, desires to have forced upon his journalistic 
readings. If Morse started, re-morse has often fol- 
lowed after, the telegraph. 

In 1833, one Hussey, from Cincinnati, improving 
upon hints glinting out through agricultural books and 
poems from the time of the Eomans, perfected some- 
what a mower and reaper, which, as since bettered by 
Manny, Ketchum, and McCormick, has made such 
quick work with our meadows and grain-fields, as to 
break up all the delicious reveries into which pictu- 
resque men in them, and sentimentalists over books 
representing them, formerly indulged. Gone is the 
mower's scythe, now nicked into the quick-sliding saw 
which eats in a day through acres of grass and golden- 
bloomed wheat. Gone, Euth-lessly, the maidens in 
broad hats, turning with a fork the low-lying clover, 
and with their eyes the uncut young Timothy, ever 
near at hand. Vanished from American harvest-fields 
the whistling grain-gatherers, driven from sight and 
pictorial illustrations by a single hussy. 

During the half-century, too, was set up that useful 
American music-box, the sewing-machine, — a box that 
now sings joyful songs of shirts, frills, pantaloons, and 



430 THE COMIC HISTOllY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

vests, in all airs, flights, and stories. In 1846 the ap- 
plication of ether to lure pain into insensibility was 
first discovered. The honor is contested between three 
Americans, an honor large enough to be divided up, 
and a third given to each ; but as each naturally covets 
the exclusive claim, the retort-like monument to per- 
petuate the discovery must be inscribed, to ether. 

At the middle of the century populations had begun 
to gather into city centres ; 515,547 in New York ; 
340,045 in Philadelphia; 169,054 in Baltimore; 136,881 
in Boston; 116,375 in New Orleans; 115,436 in Cin- 
cinnati ; 77,860 in St. Louis ; and in Brooklyn, un- 
scared by German invasions, 96,838. Chicago, with just 
a score of years, had more than a score of thousands ; 
but its frequent doublings since have run up so many 
scores, that the sum leaps the bars of all arithmetics, 
save its own. Since it has taken to drinking out of 
Lake Michigan, and begun to draw upon the Atlantic 
and Liverpool, our calculations have become so drop- 
sical that nothing but tapping can save them. 

With greater wealth had come, of course, into Amer- 
ica greater variety of aspii^ations, tastes, modes of dis- 
play, versatility of social invention and experiment. 
Most of our leading public men had lived long enough 
to have as many principles as they could number de- 
cades, as many heads as the hydra, as unlike each 
other as in cheap weeklies, and yet at one period or 
another a faithful likeness. Good-natured voters, who 
could recall twenty years of ballot experience, could 
remember a vote given for and against almost every 
Whig and Democratic chief. The country had survived 
the predictions of its downfall, although, at intervals, 



NINETEENTH CENTURY ON AMERICAN HALF-SHELL. 431 

the New York " Evening Post " for forty-nine years, 
the " National Intelligencer " for thirty-seven, the 
" Boston Post " for nineteen, the " New York Herald " 
for fifteen, and the New York " Daily Tribune " for 
nine years, had in startling type assured its readers, 
with most staccato emphasis and adjectives, of its 
speedy overthrow, if some measure which it repre- 
hended was adopted, or unless some principle which 
it advocated was not at once received into the national 
creed. 

Plutocracy, of course, also, got larger Josses and 
re-gilded their shrines with many fantastic patterns. 
Fashions enlarged and contracted, through the five 
decades, with every east wind from Paris ; and Amer- 
ican men, women, and children hastened to change the 
boots, hats, and vestments, so lovely and so much 
admired before the last arrival, with the same alarm 
after the new mode was out, as they would have 
doffed a garment that had encased a cholera jDatient. 

Fortunate then as now the feather or flower which 
formed a whole tri-mestral lodgement among the na- 
tive, or foreign beds of hair, that are so beautifully 
upholstered one month to be taken down and ridi- 
culed the next. 

The stormy petrels of disaster had frequently ap- 
peared over the fluctuating sea of our commercial life, 
covering it in 1837, and in every few successive 
epochs since, with its screaming, ill-omened, harpy 
brood, while fleets and single vessels of mercantile 
adventure broke up and lined the shore witli their 
shattered \\Tecks. Then as now the owner sometimes 
turned wrecker of his own cargo, and often made more 



432 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




NINETEENTH CENTURY ON AMERICAN HALF-SHELL. 433 

from the stranded pieces than he would have netted 
from the entire cargo had it arrived safely in port ; as 
the expected payment of its purchase price would then 
have reduced the profits. This species of mercantile 
salvage, by which the proprietor profits by his losses, 
although not unknown to the traders of Carthage, has 
had an extension in modern days, that threatens to 
put merchandizing among those equivocal ventures, 
which puzzle casuists in cases of conscience, and often 
defy even the doctrine of chances as to the pay- 
ment. 

The discovery, in 1848, of gold in California be- 
stowed upon America the Midas-touch it had fer- 
vently prayed for. Gold, sweated from the pores of 
labor, was sprinkled in a dusty showier upon the head 
of beauty, dropped in bars upon the scales of the ven- 
dors of dry goods and wet goods, filmed the eyes of 
marriageable girls with an aureous ophthalmia which 
indisposed them to see any desirable wedding unless it 
was golden, and so veneered the duties and chairs of 
railway directors, members of the legislature and of 
Congress, with a yellow smearing, that nearly all bills, 
resolutions, or orders have refused to dip into or drink 
from any stream but Pactolus. Many homes, how- 
ever, through that half-century, we are happy to say, 
unwatered by the curse of that thirsty stream, had 
taken root and sent up solid shafts whose numerous 
branches bloomed with bountiful clusters, while sweet- 
smelling vines, sjoringing alongside the family trees 
frorn the roots of the simple love-knots, spread a pro- 
tecting shade over many a family roof- tree. 

Curiously enough, Midas always had a spite against 

19 BB 



434 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

children, which grow up thickest among heaps of clam- 
shells and on poor side-hills. 

Into our flowering ecclesiastial garden, planted with 
every known variety, and exhibiting large and vigor- 
ous growths, Joseph Smith — a Vermont simple — 
introduced, in 1827, a new shrub. It bore at first a 
double Mormon flower-looking tip, distributed in pretty 
equal numbers on its deep-green, sucker-like shoots ; 
but transplanted first to Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1838, and 
ten years later to the alkaline soil of Utah, it im- 
mediately bore the female variety in alarming dispro- 
portion. This Salt Lake shrub — of the genus polyga- 
mous — has become by cultivation a very rank weed, 
smelling earthily to heaven. Its numerous Young 
off-shoots require severe cutting, if not distinct sub- 
soil treatment. 

Architecture at last began to raise its tasteful fronts, 
Elizabethan, Gothic, Italian cottage, or American 
composite, set in trim yards or on smooth-shaven 
lawns, netted and webbed by paths and walks. On 
headlands, fringed with sea-wave ruffles; in valleys 
gladdened by the smiles of brooks and rallied into hap- 
py, healthy, joyousness by the outbursting frolicsome 
hills that cannot hold in their peculiar humors ; on the 
sloping banks of many rivers seaward running ; and on 
bossed and tufted hillocks where the pines, spruces, 
and larches hang aloft through aU seasons their 
graceful flags, tasteful residences with clustering out- 
houses, sheltered thrift, corralled the domestic wealth 
which Midas cannot buy, and resounded Avith whoops 
that brought out other hoops in turn. Farmsteads had 
steadily added improvements, amplified their breadths. 



NINETEENTH CENTURY ON AMERICAN HALF-SHELL. 435 

changed their white coats into colors more harmonious, 
and gathered around them well-adjusted farm build- 
ings, and in their neatly fenced yards better stock, 
quadrupedal, bipedal, feathered, furred, and scaly. 

Under improved cultivation our two national farms 
— the sea and land — produced, in 1850, crops that 
weighted the census heavily. The former shoAved 
1,360 new American-built vessels, carrying 272,218 
tons ; and the latter bore a growth that year of 
53,000,000 pounds of wool, 100,000,000 bushels of 
wheat, 592,000,000 bushels of Indian corn, 813,000,000 
pounds of cotton, 14,000,000 tons of hay, grown on 
farms valued at $3,300,000,000, upon which were 
used implements costing S 153,000,000, and stocked 
with live animals valued at $ 544,000,000. 

But while American hands were thus busy through 
the half-century, American heads were not idle or 
unproductive. Of course in numbers political writ- 
ings led, as political discussion is the intellectual 
bread' and butter of Americans. Histories of many 
of the States — of Connecticut, by Benjamin Trum- 
bull ; of Pennsylvania, by Piobert Proud ; of New 
England, by Hannah Adams; "Annals of America," 
by Dr. Abiel Holmes, father of the many-tongued, 
myriad-sided Oliver Wendell, and others — gathered up 
the variously colored skeins of the busy-fingered past ; 
while lives of eminent statesmen— Patrick Henry's, 
by the accomplished Wirt, Ictus laudato viro ; of Co- 
lumbus, by Irving, himself a discoverer of new 
worlds in America ; Washington's, Franklin's, Adams's, 
and others, by Jared Sparks ; and a long catalogue of 
others — presented pictures of rare personal daring. 



436 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

heroism, patriotism, learning, and worth, set in choicely 
carved and polished frames. 

Investigations in, and sketches of, our physical 
geography and of the natural history of our flora, 
fauna, reptilia, fishes, and birds, by Professor Barton, 
Alexander Wilson, John J. Audubon, Samuel L. Mitch- 
ell, Timothy Flint, and kindred minds, brought out, 
in lights as brilliant as our October sunsets, our wide 
surfaces, and the objects crawling, flitting, or flying 
upon and over them. In sacred literature, theology, 
and polemics, Samuel Miller, Edward Eobinson, Moses 
Stuart, William EUery Channing, Francis Wayland, 
Kicholas Murray, the Wares (father and son), Theodore 
Parker, the Alexanders, George Bush, Edward Beecher, 
and a marshalled host of others, upheld by logical 
force and with learned or lively dialectics the cher- 
ished views of their various sects. Philosophy, moral, 
mental, metaphysical, and international, spoke golden- 
mouthed and eloquent its reasoned rules, principles, 
and large, grasping deductions through Henry James, 
Tayler Lewis, Ealph Waldo Emerson, Asa Mahan, 
C. S. Henry, L. P. Hickok, Henry Wheaton, and other 
diligent minds ; while language was enriched and 
fertilized by the culturing labors of Worcester, Web- 
ster, Marsh, Schoolcraft, and Duponceau. 

In general literature our hemisphere sparkled with 
fixed stars, like Irving, Prescott, Story, the Everetts 
(Alexander and Edward), Cooper, Motley, Ticknor, 
Bancroft, Pauldmg, Hawthorne, Hillard, Wilde, Legare, 
and uncounted more, which lit it up with beautiful 
lights, that blent their flames with the soft poetic 
rays of Bryant, Longfellow, Halleck, Whittier, Saxe, 



NINETEENTH CENTURY ON AMERICAN HALF-SHELL. 437 

Lowell, Poe, Willis, Hillhouse, the Careys, the David- 
son sisters, — scarcely shown ere they were snatched 
away, 

" Ostendent terris hunc tantum fata neque ultra 
Esse sinent." 

Magazines and Ee views, although first appearing in 
1745, began to be cultivated about 1815 by scholarly 
minds, for refined readers. " The North American Ee- 
view," " The American Quarterly," " Southern Quar- 
terly," " The Christian Examiner," " The New York Ee- 
view," " The Knickerbocker," and eager crowds of less 
note, presented, ere the half-shell was cast aside, such 
palatable relishes that people wondered how they had 
ever contrived to make a meal without them. 

On the whole, looking over the multiform bill of 
fare, it presented a healthy and not discreditable array. 
If the service was not as faultless as a Sybarite luxury 
of taste might desire, or if absent, might criticise, it was 
not destitute of refinement, and while consciously sus- 
ceptible of improvement, was as consciously guiltless of 
many of the sins so wittily summarized against it by 
Sidney Smith. There was, doubtless, veal too young 
for the goggle-eyed epicure, who had haunted the Trois 
Freres Provcncaux, in Paris, for twoscores of years, 
and the dishonest debaucheries of European courts, 
with vicious diligence ; there was manifestly beef too 
much done for the dyspeptically over-fed stomach, too 
critical to enjoy, too weak to digest, anything hearty ; 
there was pork here and there in the place of pheas- 
ant^' hearts and nightingales' tongues ; there were 
plump joints, which stood where foreign-fed stomachs 
might have preferred to find some rare, unpronounce- 



438 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

able dish, some New-found-land estray, smothered in 
the sudden tides of Trench sauces, and, there were, also 
certain culinary anachronisms that had, by an uncalcu- 
lating liberality — so abundant in America — piled 
themselves thoughtlessly on the great half-shell, — a 
blue-pouted oyster, for example, in a month destitute 
of an r and of ar-oma, or sweetmeats and sweetbreads 
for breakfast. Still, there was a very lavish spread, out 
of which a reasonable foreigner or an un-Europeanized 
native might pick a good deal, before he churlishly 
finished his meal oii vinegar, or pettishly gave himself 
up to sugared water. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE BEGINNING OF STRIFE; OR, THE TAYLOR AND FILL- 
MORE WEBBING 

1849-1853. 

The Young Polka Dancer becomes Floor Manager. — The large Apples of 

Discord emptied on the Floor of Congress. — What they were ; and the 
Pacific Trees from which they fell. — Of California, New Mexico, and 
Deseret. — General Taylor's Death, and Mr. Fillmore's suave Man- 
ners and smooth Appeals. — Wendell Phillips and J. Davis. — Political 
Nurses and Anodynes. — Kossuth and his Short Catechism. — How 
it did not take, and how he did. — A large Piece of .Tapanned Ware. — 
Deaths of Clay and Webster. — The Autumn- Glory which they shed 
on a Stormy Season. 

THE young man who, in Texas and Mexico, had 
got through the polka to the delight of the spec- 
tators, and the discontent of the floor committee, be- 
came himself the general manager for the coming 
season ; Millard Fillmore being first assistant. 

Already, however, the apple of discord, or rather a 
whole barrelful of very red-faced Spitzenbergs, mixed 
with meal-colored russets, had been emptied into the 
Union, and rolled over the floor of Congress. The 
acquisitions, gained from Mexico by arms and the 
treaty of 1848, including the new gold weights handed 
up by California, disturbed the adjustments of Mr. 
Calhoun's patent balances, which only worked well 
when a colored State was put on one side at the same 
moment that an uncolored one was put upon the other, 



440 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

— an operation about as difficult and just as natural, 
as that which regulates the number of children in a 
family to the number of bushels of wheat grown in 
any season, or to the number of windy days in the year. 
In 1850, three Territories pressed for admission as 
States, each carrying some of the fatal apples ; Cali- 
fornia, with a Constitution excluding slavery ; New 
Mexico, formed out of Texas, but disputing with her a 
boundary line ; and Utah, then called Deseret, taking 
in all the women which could be drawn thither, and, 
by the aid of its dry air, absorbing them into the 
Smith and Young families. Texas herself, admitted 
into the Union in December, 1847, always swaggering 
with a rapier in her belt and a patch over her eye, 
bullied New Mexico lustily on one side, so as to make 
lustier claims upon the United States on the other, — 
a cock-eyed way of shooting that made one barrel with 
two diverging eyes over the sight do the work of a 
double-shooter. Petitions from the North for the 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and 
from the South for a more stringent fugitive-slave 
act, rolled very large Spitzenbergs and russets on the 
floor of Congress. 

Looking from the legislative galleries upon the 
newly arrived heap, a Western stroller might have 
asked of his comrade, as the freshly landed Irishman 
demanded of his countrymen, at his first sight of a 
tortoise walking about, " Be these live snuff-boxes 
common in these America ; be they or he they ?" and 
might have received a like answer, " Be asy, and look 
on I teU ye, for I dunno's they be, and I dunno as 
they be." 



THE BEGINNING OF STRIFE. 441 

Suddenly, however, Mr. Clay's old established omni- 
bus, belonging to the compromise line, — which gener- 
ally took up all the passengers, rejoicing at their good 
luck, although apt to set them down very discontented 
at the end of the way, — drove in to carry off in one 
load all of these fretting, complaining subjects. 

Just at this time, July 9, 1850, the large-hearted but 
short-headed President died, and the polite and urbane 
Fillmore, 

" Washing his hands with invisible soap, 
In imperceptible water," 

stepped out on the balcony, and, bowing suavely to- 
wards the driver and the quarrelsome load, begged Mr. 
Webster, Mr. Corwin, Mr. Crittenden, and other by- 
standers, to be good enough to assist in getting the 
carry-all and the disagreeable objects that kept so many 
people awake o' nights, out of Washington. It was 
not until September, however, before the tightly 
crammed vehicle was started, carrying California in a 
State suit, unattended by a colored servant, New Mex- 
ico, and Utah as Territorial passengers, with the liberty 
of having bronzed property or not along with them, 
slavers taken out of the District of Columbia never 
to return, a chest containing ten million dollars for the 
State with a patch on its eye, and messengers to the 
Northern free States, informing them that hereafter 
they were to break up all underground railroads, and 
to send stray Southern baggage, without its owners, 
back whence it had departed. 

Of course everybody was dissatisfied, except Wendell 
Phillips, J. Davis, and their following, — tlie ascend- 
entalists and descendentalists, — who, sincere devotees 
19* 



442 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

for equality and . inequality, found a novel pleasure in 
having new stand-points, from which they could each 
look up to or down upon, a grievance large enough for 
thought, speech, and action. 

The political nurses, of course, thought that the pare- 
goric had forever quieted the crying evils ; but wiser 
people foresaw that these attempts to get remedies for 
wide-awake consciences and interests out of a Con- 
gress-water bottle were just as idle as the conjurer's 
trick to obtain whiskey, wine cordial, brandy, and milk- 
punch from the same nozzle. 

In 1851 Louis Kossuth, brought over from Turkey, 
whither he had escaped from Hungary in a national 
ship, put forth, immediately on his arrival here, a very 
short catechism, which comprised a single question 
and answer. 

" Q. What is the chief end of Americans ? 

"A. To fight Austria evermore." 

After spending most eloquent commentaries upon this 
brief compendium of duty, in which he braided newly 
spun English words and upbraided American indiffer- 
ence, he abandoned the missionary field, leaving a large 
Kossuth party, but a very small body of proselytes to 
Kossuth's gospel. 

In 1852 we obtained an immensely large piece of 
japanned ware, — a Japanese treaty bargained for by 
Commodore Perry, — a piece which seems to grow 
larger the longer we look at it. 

The death of Mr. Clay in June, 1852, and of Mr. 
Webster in October following, left, like the touch of 
frost in autumn, a dying glory to the troubled and 
storm-swept season which had just passed over Amer- 
ica. 



CHAPTEE XVI. 

THE UNION PIERCED ; OR, PIERCE'S TURN. 

1853-1857. 

Reference, by Believers in the Transmigration of Souls, to Mr. Pierce for 
its Proof. — His real and apparent Age. — The Slave Colossal Figure 
bestrides the Presidential Harbor. — How the New President rode in 
between its Legs, and cast out a cm-ious Anchor. — An Antediluvian 
Cabinet. — Still Times expected. — Sudden Freshet. — Douglas breaks 
the Missouri Dike. — Bitter Waters over the Land. — Alarm among the 
Elderly Gentlemen, and how quieted by J. Davis. — Alarm North and 
South not quieted. — The African Outlook towards the North Pole. — 
The Power of Douglas illustrated from his Scotch Namesake and 
Proverb. — What Warriors rushed to our Flanders. — The Blow on 
the Head of Sumner and Slavery from Brooks's Cane. — The Dred 
Scott Essays. — American Africanization. — An Exploring Party in 
the Interior. — Discovery of an Extinct Race, and of Fremont. — Un- 
diked Waters not strong enough to float Douglas into a Nomination. — 
Buchanan in the Dock. — The Know-Nothings make a neat little Pres- 
ent to a Polite Gentleman. 

BELIEVERS in the doctrine of transmigration of 
souls point to Franklin Pierce for its triumphant 
demonstration. Although by ordinary reckoning but 
forty-nine years old when, in March, 1853, he came 
out of New Hampshire to be President of the United 
States, he must have lived — so they assert — some- 
where through several previous existences and brought 
alon^ with him the last time the cherished notions of 
the mrst. Certainly he was as much of an anachro- 
nism as a two-handled plough, dragged by a yoke of 



444 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

oxen, contrasted with a steam one driving its hot 
shares through dissolving acres, an undecked Eoman 
trireme rowed against an iron-breasted monitor armed 
with the heaviest modern gun, or an old-fashioned 
scythe in comparison with a mower. 

His ideas of government were scant for a good-sized 
town, and of slavery so patriarchal, that a Eed Eiver 
planter might have taken several lessons from him 
with great profit. 

Slavery at that time, like the colossal statue of 
Apollo at Rhodes, stood with its two feet widely 
apart. Its right was planted in the commercial cities 
of the North, covered with a huge stocking of North- 
ern manufacture ; its left, spread out like Sambo's, all 
over the Gulf States, was carefully enwrapped with 
raw cotton. Between its wide-spread legs Mr. Pierce, 
like an ancient mariner, sailed into the harbor, and 
cast out an anchor, forged at Baltimore, or it may be 
at Nineveh, with an inscription on its best fluke, " No 
agitation about slavery." It might as well have been 
inscribed, " No more thinking." 

He asked several elderly gentlemen to help him 
have a good quiet time : William L. Marcy, with the 
portfolio of State ; James Guthrie, incubating the snug 
little Treasury nest ; Jefferson Davis, with the appropri- 
ate red-lettered War rifle ; Caleb Gushing, holding the 
Attorney-General's fool's-cap brief; Robert McClelland, 
bringing an oaken inlaid table for the Interior; and 
James Campbell, an old-fashioned letter- weigher. 

They expected to have a good antediluvian time of 
it, as Mr. Clay's compromise carry-all had transported 
into the wilderness the bad-looking lot which had 



THE UNION PIERCED. 445 

broken into the peace of the gentlemanly Fillmore. 
Mr. Buchanan was sent away to England, and some 
restless engineers somewhere toward the Pacific, — a 
pleasant-sounding place far away out West, — to get 
up a report on a railroad which might amuse the 
yoimg people to read in the long winter evenings. 

Suddenly, however, all of these serene prospects 
were clouded. The great shield, constructed by the 
Democratic Convention to hang in front of the venera- 
ble President, and to prevent agitation, was found, 
in spite of its solid-looking face, to be pierced on the 
inside by impertinent little teredos, whose ceaseless 
boring had already begun to weaken its resisting 
power. Other mariners wished to sail in between 
the cotton-covered feet. And in January, 1854, one 
of these Presidential seamen, from Illinois, named 
Stephen A. Douglas, leaped ashore on a bluff point 
just outside the harbor, exclaiming with great lung 
power that "every Territory had a right to do as it 
chose about slavery." This declaration from a Demo- 
cratic friend startled the elderly party not a little ; but 
when that friend rose to a higher pitch and shouted 
that the Missouri Compromise line of 1821 which kept 
slavery from all territory north of 36° 30', was uncon- 
stitutional, and leaping upon the solid old dike, with 
bill and blow, crashed through it, letting out the 
bitter waters of strife to flood with' its pent-up 
strength all the wide land, the antediluvian party 
started to their feet in great alarm. When, however, 
Mr. Davis whispered to the President that this was 
only undoing a modern wrong, and restoring ancient 
rights, that venerable gentleman folded his arms and 
sat ddwn contented. 



446 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Looking out upon the freshet, the bewildered Afri- 
cans seemed to feel that their only refuge was the 
north pole, now that even the wilds of Kansas and 
Nebraska furnished only markets for their higher- 
priced bodies. For a time the " little Douglas " appeared 
to look as large as the colossus itself. He seemed to 
be as powerful in American politics as the family of 
his Scottish namesake, which after intermarrying eleven 
times with the royal stocks of England and Scotland, 
became so resistless as to start the proverb, " No man 
may touch a Douglas, nor a Douglas man, for if he 
do he is sure to come by the waur " (worse). 

But the broad-wasting flood, poured out from the 
cleft dike, soon sent an alarm throughout the North, 
and inspired terror among even the conscientious of 
the South. To protect slavery — however repugnant 
— where it existed in the old States was felt very 
universally in the North to be a duty imposed by law, 
equity, and good neighborhood ; but to batter down a 
barrier which had been erected by both North and 
South, every timber in which had been paid for by 
a price given and accepted, shook nearly all con- 
sciences into sad action. Wherever the waters swept 
there were land-slides from Democratic grounds. The 
shield against agitation now crumbled like the stricken 
dike. 

Kansas became another Flanders, where pikes, knives, 
and pistols were can-ied at the plough, into private 
houses, through villages, and into conventions. They 
were ever-present adjectives to the noun " man." As in 
the tropics, whirlwinds rush in towards the sun's hot 
path, so towards Kansas from Missouri swept advocates 



THE UNION PIERCED. 447 

of slavery with bullets for the settler and brands for his 
dwelling ; from New England long-haired men and 
short-haired women, ready all, some anxious, to be 
offered up for the cause of freedom ; from the Middle 
and Western States sharp, bayonet-faced, earnest 
crusaders to rescue the threatened sacred ground and 
to throw down the bronze statues and statutes. On 
the path of these hot streams backward soon lay the 
scorched and burnt relics of slavery in Kansas. 

To slavery in the United States a moral blow was 
dealt by the cane of Preston S. Brooks, aimed May 22, 
1856, at the undefended head of Senator Sumner, 
which had a few days before opened to express in 
emphatic words its owner's ideas about African bar- 
barism in America. This appropriate practical illus- 
tration of the argument was visible everywhere, and 
became more potent than any books from or in behalf 
of the running Brooks. 

The cane given to the chivalrous Carolinian was a 
poor straw which did not show the way the winds 
blew. 

Still another blow was given by the Dred Scott 
opinion of a majority of the Supreme Court, which 
advised the people in choice legal terms that the dike 
was rightfully cut ; that men with dark skins had no 
rights which those with light ones need pay any atten- 
tion to ; and that uncolored owners might take ebony 
bipeds along with their quadrupeds into any State in 
any part of the Union without getting them out of an 
unpaid state. 

This Africanization brought out a new party, — 
called the Eepublican, — for keeping the Territories 



448 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

free. Several political missionaries, benevolently in- 
clined towards our continent, started on trips into 
the interior of America, bent, like Dr. Livingstone, on 
exploring regions almost surrendered, like Africa, to 
the descendants of Ham. The result was the dis- 
covery of a race, deemed almost extinct, who actually 
believed that colored men might live unowned, and 
that Territories, where slavery did not exist, would get 
along better without than with it. 

This party discovered John C. Fremont, and set him 
up as a candidate. Of course some people thought 
that his election would fracture the Union, which, they 
believed, was held -together by gum-bo. 

The undiked waters would not float Mr. Douglas 
up to a two-thirds vote for the Presidential nomi- 
nation. Mr. Buchanan, buoyed up by Southern corks, 
reached the dock. The Know-Nothings took up the 
polite Fillmore, and gratified him with a present of the 
neat but useless eight votes of Maryland. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

COTTON-SEEDS SPROUT; OR, BUCHANAN'S ADMINISTRATION. 

1857-1861. 

The new Missionary P.arty and its Growth. — Character of Mr. Buchanan, 
and his Want of Same. — Description of curious Drawers in his Cab- 
inet. — The Uses of Isaac Toucey. — The Lecompton Constitution, and 
how it fell together. — African Order of the Woolly Fleece. — The 
Mormon Magic-Lantern, and its Shows. — What Minnesota brought 
into the Union ; and how a Long-fellow raised a Fall. — The War 
of the Illinois Giants. — Abraham Lincoln described. — Self-made Men ; 
their Self-ishness and Unsymmeti-ical Characters.- — Mr. Lincoln's 
Growth and Character illustrated. — Mr. Douglas delineated. — Presi- 
dential Bonfires, Tar-Barrels, and Oratoiy. — A Spectre in Virginia; 
his Body swinging, his Sovil marching on. — A live Coal on the South- 
em Heart. — What the Democratic Convention was asked to solve, 
and what it re-solved. Heads I win. Tails I don't lose. — Brecken- 
ridge as a rare Prize-Taker. — The Missionary Party makes a Nomi- 
nation. — New Lights and Shadows. — An original Recipe for threat- 
ened Political Apoplexy. — A sudden Convention in South Carolina. 
— Its mysterious Origin and Dark Ways. — A Chaotic Message. — Of 
different Secession Ordinances; and Want of Federal Ordnance. — 
Political Strikers described. — General Cass and a Broken Heart. — 
John B. Floyd skedaddles, chased by an Indictment. — General Ander- 
son. — Fort Sumter breaks the Cabinet. — The Confederate Govern- 
ment and Flag made. — Their Composition. — History and Character 
of J. Davis. — Where Mr. Buchanan went March 4, 1861. 

THE votes for Fremont were 1,341,264, against 
1,838,169 for James Buchanan, and showed how 
successful the missionaries had been, and the rapid 
growth of the tribe recently discovered and distinctly 
iin-extipct. 



450 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Unlike his predecessor, Mr. Buclianan was not so 
much the representative of a past age, as the gristled 
type of unboned nothings. He was unorganized chaos, 
without any personal will to bring it into useful form, 
swinging through a blind menstruum of thin party air, 
lit up only by small fire-flies, that left a deeper dark- 
ness behind their quickly quenched and shifting 
sparks. His Cabinet was of course a bureau with no 
two drawers alike. Its principal one, Lewis Cass, was 
of rosewood, well seasoned, beautifully grained and 
polished. The money-drawer, Mr. Cobb, was of bird's- 
eye maple, with eyes enough in it to see all ways. 
Lower down was one of lignum mice, hard and tough, 
John B. Floyd, with a knot-hole in the rear part by 
which access was had to the drawer above, full of me- 
tallic corn shelled off the Treasury cob. Below this 
was one ^ soft pine, full of treacherous, punky spots, 
eJacob Thompson, of and from the Interior. And still 
lower, Isaac Toucey, brought on from Hartford, Con- 
necticut, looking like a Dismal Swamp cedar, quite 
unfit for navy purposes, or in fact for aught but the 
flanges of a dredging-machine, working up stagnant 
fe\^er-and-ague channels. 

The cotton-seeds, so widely planted by Douglas, J. 
Davis, Brooks, Taney, A. H. Stephens, and others, dur- 
ing the preceding four years, now sprouted up in vig- 
orous shoots. A Constitution, hastily shaken together 
by self-made delegates, mostly from Missouri, riding in 
foamy haste to Lecompton, was tied with a very black 
cord and sent to Washington, to be indorsed as a good 
thing for Kansas. Mr. Douglas struck it with his 
dike-cleaver ; but Mr. J. Davis, J. M. Mason, John Sli- 



COTTON-SEEDS SPBOUT. 



451 




452 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

dell, — booted Knights of the African Order of the 
Woolly Fleece, — re-tied the severed strings and lifted 
it through the halls of Congress. 

Meanwhile, the Mormons in Utah, getting up a sort 
of magic-lantern show of a rebellion, — outlining on 
the rocky walls of the Salt Lake basin, the shadowy 
procession of females looking defiantly at United States 
cannon and canons, — caused a momentary diversion 
from the new and growing question of a single Union. 

The next year, 1858, Minnesota, first penetrated by 
La Salle in 1680, a year before William Penn stood, 
for the first time, on the future site of Philadelphia, 
was brought in as a State, giving us St. Paul as a 
northwestern Cuba for consumptives, Fort Snelling for 
gamblers in public lands, and the rather low Falls of 
Minnehaha to be raised by a Long-fellow into a lofty 
iridescence, whose rainbow strands have been woven 
into heavenly fabrics in so many delighted households, 
American, European, and Asiatic. On paper it is poet- 
ically higher by many feet, iambic and trochean, than 
Niagara, or even the Falls of the Yosemite. 

The same year witnessed in Illinois the war of the 
giants for the vacant Senatorship. The two Anaks 
were the dike-breaker and one Abraham Lincoln, then 
forty-nine years old, whose various residences in differ- 
ent States, in Kentucky, his birthplace, in Indiana 
and Illinois, had taught him the value of the Union ; 
and whose arm, sinewy with labor, and made more 
vigorous by his largely pumping heart, dealt blows 
which resounded sharply and broadly beyond the 
prairie fields which saw the encounter. 

A self-made man is too common an object in Amer- 



COTTON-SEEDS SPROUT. 453 

ica to excite or deserve special attention ; and most 
self-made men, so called, are distressingly selfish, un- 
symmetrical, and one-sided, — poor jobs abandoned by 
all creators but tliemselves. Even if they did not 
proclaim their self-structure to all, every one would at 
once recognize it by its disjointed architecture. Mr. 
Lincoln was an exception. More strictly speaking, he 
was rather a growth than a creation. In his steadily 
increasing gentle greatness, he reminds one of those 
slender riUs which hesitatingly creep out from some 
modest, unvisited nook in the AUeghanies, noiselessly 
finds its way many unnoticed miles, until it begins to 
glint between cleared farmsteads, and swells slowly into 
a broad stream, whose brawny shoulders turn with ease 
mills and factories along its beneficent course. Then 
gathering volume, depth, and power, it upbears barges, 
into which whole districts have emptied their rich 
cornucopias, and pleasure-boats, gay with genial tour- 
ists ; while along its great triumphal sea- ward march 
villages, towns, and cities clap their hands with admir- 
ing joy. Mr. Douglas is the same low-born rill, 
which soon, however, swells into the hurrying torrent, 
clattering over jagged rocks, between bold, mountain- 
ribbed canyons, jarring the earth with its audacious 
plunges, shaking defiantly its foamed way through 
gaps and rent gashes, until it hurls its massed waters 
over fields which it sweeps with disastrous grandeur. 

Although the popular vote in Illinois was in Mr. 
Lincoln's favor, the legislative ballots were for his con- 
testant. The new questions now illuminated news- 
papers, platforms, and domestic hearthstones. 

Bonfires, colored lights, and pyrotechnic displays of 



454 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

oratory soon lit up the whole Union, and through the 
varied flames ever interplayed the figure of the Afri- 
can. 

Suddenly, in the autumn of 1859, through the lurid 
light was thrust a gaunt, resolute, earnest-looking form, 
with a face calm with long excitement, over whose 
lines ran the savage history of Kansas murders and 
house-burnings, fatal shots from border rifles at well- 
loved sons, midnight escapes from Lecompton riders, 
and years of hunted violence and wrong. From the 
close-shut jaws, — seldom opened now except for food, 
for brief prayer before some new raid, or for an im- 
precation wrenched out by some cruel recollection, — 
come no sounds. Across the bridge at Harper's Ferry, 
through the scared streets of that little garrisoned 
place, and next into the jail it stalks. Then it flits 
into court, calmer than the personated Justice, and 
then, marched between files of soldiers, to fence off a 
phantom invasion, it mounts the scaffold. An old 
man, with a grim smile stranded on the iron rim of his 
lips, swings in Virginia air, and — John Brown's soul 
goes marching on. 

On the Southern heart this Quixotic invasion by a 
mistaken, personally injured father, maddened by the 
losses of his sons, and unjustifiably wreaking his indi- 
vidual injuries on a community innocent of any wrong 
to him, laid a live, inflaming coal. 

In April, 1860, the Democratic Convention met at 
Charleston. Some gentlemen asked that body to de- 
clare its belief that the Union, having been got up 
principally to hold Africans in an unpaid condition, 
any uncolored owner could, by virtue of the laws of his 



COTTON-SEEDS SPROUT. 455 

own State, take these bronze-colored bipeds, — always 
diffusing a bad odor unless to their proprietors, — to 
any Territory. ISTot holding such a notion, the Con- 
vention declined to make the declaration, but, on the 
contrary, asserted that each Territory was competent- 
to deal with the matter as it saw fit. The question, 
thus resolved, was not of course to the minority satis- 
factorily solved. 

Following a convenient practice, deemed by some 
persons, unschooled in such things, a little uncommon 
among gentlemen, of getting, if possible, a decision 
favorable to their views which shall bind the minority, 
and if unsuccessful repudiating the adverse decision 
as affecting them, the delegates of six bronze-statued 
States left the unreasonable party, carrying a banner 
with a dimly seen inscription, " Heads I win, tails you 
lose, or, tails I win, heads you lose." The convention, 
thus treated to Breckinridge principles, adjourned to 
meet in June at Baltimore. 

Meanwhile, in May, the missionary party, rein- 
forced by numerous converts, assembled and chose 
the Anak of Illinois as their leader. In June the 
widowed Democratic Convention reassembled; but 
only to split up into two family divisions, the one 
nominating the dike-breaker, the other John C. Breck- 
enridge, then Vice-President, and destined in a few 
years to take, not the Presidency, but the very first 
prize for a character which total depravity is occasion- 
ally permitted to offer, lest fiction may invent a com- 
bination that shall outstrip reality. 

Of course the Drummond lights now burned bright- 
er. Tar and oratory illumined corner groceries and 



456 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

open-air meetings. Small men, set to tlie large honor 
of presiding over these gatherings, which in an hour or 
two settled " the most stupendous questions that free- 
men were ever called to meet," became apoplectic, and 
were only saved to tlieir country by an application at 
the nearest bar-room of a remedy reduced to a pre- 
scription in which 

Aqua-vitae ..... 92 parts, 
Aqua-pura . . . . . ^ part, 
Saccharum ..... 7^ parts, 



restored them to par, or 100 proof. 

When in November, 1860, the lights were put out, 
it appeared that Mr. Lincoln had received 180, Mr. 
Breckenridge 72, Mr. Bell 39, and the Douglas 12 
electoral votes. There were 130,773 more ballots cast 
even at the South against Mr. Breckenridge than in 
his favor. His opinion of the Union, for which he 
had run out of breath to be President, was now, of 
course, very unfavorable ; but as it was balanced by 
its kindred opinion of him, he was under no obligation 
to confirm its judgment by taking the first prize soon 
after offered to him. 

South Carolina, which had often been outvoted before, 
only waited this time four days — not stopping long 
enough to see if she was hurt, or how the heads-and- 
tails flag would look — before calling a convention which 
more Ccmolcnse substantially resolved that the Union 
had broken the Union, and that the people who voted 
differently from South Carohna were unconstitutional, 
and ergo, that she might have her own Constitution 



COTTON-SEEDS SPROUT. 457 

and "by-laws. She had helped to rule the roast so long 
that she could not think of taking turns now. 

Congress met in December, 1860. Of course John 
C. Breckenridge was on hand. To him the Union was 
a good thing so long as he could preside over its rep- 
resentatives. While caucusing nights against it, he 
could sit in daylight to administer oaths — and even 
to take them — to support it. 

The message was full of unginned cotton-seeds vig- 
orously sprouting. It charged the attempted burglary 
of the Union safe, not on the bm-glars, but upon its 
owners. It chided the people for having done wrong 
in electing an Anak so absurd as not to agree with 
South Carolina on the little dark-skinned question; 
proposed several Africanizing amendments to the Fed- 
eral Constitution, and then floundered into the author's 
chronic chaos ; seeming at one moment to believe that 
a State could not secede, then again that it rather 
could ; then, that if it did, it ought not to ; but then if 
it ought not to, who could prevent it if it did ; and if 
it did not, why the fire-flies did not hold out their lit- 
tle lanterns long enough to light him, or in fact any 
one else that he knew of, across the miry place. 

The old hickory-tree had manifestly been chopped 
down and a very spongy bass-wood had been substi- 
tuted in the Federal grounds. 

During January, 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, 
Georgia, and Louisiana somehow did something, in 
some way, somewhere, by somebody, — as did Texas in 
the month of February following, — which was claimed 
by the head-and-tails party in the South, as indicating 
the popular conviction that Sambo was the only proper 
20 



458 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

object of care by Uncle Sam ; that tliey fancied from 
what they suspected that the Anak Abraliam would 
not carry their pet lamb in his bosom as it had been 
carried ; and that therefore the family was played out. 
These mysterious, inexplicable somethings, by some- 
body, somewhere and somehow, were gravely labelled 
" Ordinances of Secession." Certain it is, that in not 
one of these States, except in Texas, were the people 
consulted about or called to ratify these very grave 
resolves. Having only three months before voted 
against their incarnation, — the prize-taker, — it is to 
be presumed that they would hold to the same beliefs 
still, in the absence of any act or deed on the part of 
the Anak to induce a change of opinion. 

The uncomic truth is, that in this case, as in so many 
others which have occurred or are occurring in our 
political history, these overwhelmingly large questions 
— upon which hang so many lives, so much happiness 
or suffering, such accumulated stores of hard-earned 
savings and character — were undertaken to be an- 
swered by a few cunning, selfish, dishonest, narrow- 
headed politicians, audaciously presuming upon what 
they ignorantly called leadership, — in the absence of 
men engaged in more honest work, of clearer head and 
better instincts, — who, idle hands in a country where 
all just men are busy, too proud to work, too poor to live 
without the proceeds of others' labor, ever restless and 
intriguing for luxurious places and foremost positions, 
find that, by getting up a strike, they can preside, 
of&cer, talk to, and become prominent at assemblages 
of arrested workmen, and live from their accumulated 
fund. 



COTTON-SEEDS SPROUT. 459 

Disturbed, as well they might be, by these mysterious 
ordinances, forged by these mischievous idlers, an as- 
semblage of white-headed and unwisely patriotic gen- 
tlemen met at Washington to get rid of them. Ord- 
nance would undoubtedly have affected it, but ordnance 
was not to be thought of by those who were recom- 
mending cotton-sprouts and hopelessly tramjDing after 
fire-flies. 

Some of the Southern Senators gathered up their 
dark robes, and loftily chaffing their Northern asso- 
ciates, strode from the chamber. 

There was no ordnance in Washington. Of course 
John C. Breckenridge did not yet follow them ; it was 
more profitable to him and the ordinance parties to 
stay. 

John B. Floyd dispersed our little army of 16,000 
men into small squads far away from the ordnance- 
makers. He knew that the cotton-sprouts would grow 
better unshaded by bayonets. On land there was no 
ordnance where it was needed. 

General Eobert Anderson, of Southern birth, was, in 
the autumn of 1860, assigned to Charleston Harbor, and 
there left with only 80 men to the presumed magnetic 
attractions of that affirmative place. To these his pat- 
riotism declined to be drawn. December 26, 1860, he 
removed from Fort Moultrie to Sumter, two miles 
farther off from the magnets. For eight months pre- 
ceding, Mr. Floyd had sent heaps of muskets and am- 
munition, as desirable compost for the cotton-sprouts. 
Isaac Toucey, of Hartford, Connecticut, of a cold tem- 
perament, and from a cool latitude, thought the health 
of naval officers might suffer from the heats of Charles- 



460 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ton, Wilmington, Savannah, St. Augustine, Mobile, and 
New Orleans, and so ordered our ships to rove in dis- 
tant seas. 

There was, therefore, no ordnance off the seaboard. 

The little garrison at Fort Sumter now became the 
pivot of the Union. Around the question of its rein- 
forcement the Cabinet swung and went to pieces. Gen- 
eral Cass, who had broken his sword before surrendering 
it to those who sought to prevent our Union, now broke 
his heart over the attempts of those who sought to shiver 
it in pieces. He was succeeded by Jeremiah S. Black, 
a gentleman devoted to the black family when en- 
chained, indifferent to them when free. Floyd, one 
of the ring-leaders in the strike, skedaddled to Virginia, 
followed in his rapid journey by an indictment for hav- 
ing connived at the withdrawal of $ 870,000 worth of 
bonds from Jacob Thompson's loosely managed Interior. 
His place was taken by the unbelieving Thomas, of 
Maryland, who soon became tangled by his want of 
faith, and w^as svicceeded by General Dix, who had 
more confidence in guns than in Dixie. 

On the 4th of February, 1861, the en-guKed States 
and South Carolina sent some delegates — chosen also 
somehow, somewhere, by somebody, in some way un- 
known — to Montgomery, Alabama, to a convention, 
where the leading strikers of course got upon the plat- 
form, and had the principal chairs. They proceeded 
forthwith to concoct that first-class patent medicine 
for all supposed ills, a constitution. In the compo- 
sition of this draught radex Africanus largely en- 
tered. It was to be poured out by slaves, and taken 
every waking hour. A separate government, called 



COTTON-SEEDS SPROUT. 



461 




462 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

the Confederate, was set up by these somehow dele- 
gates. 

A flag was also devised, not in consonance with 
the avowed object of its bearers, namely, — a col- 
ored man saddled and running like an unpaid, tireless 
velocipede with a white rider in the seat working 
its shackled, eccentric way, — but with stars and 
bars, — stars rayless as night, and bars destined to be 
very sinister to the Southern hopes, and eventually 
to be leaped and beaten down by spirited Northern 
trampers. 

To be President of this African Commonwealth, the 
mysteriously elected delegates invited J. Davis, who 
was as ready to say yes as the old maid who had done 
the courting for a series of years. Of a metaphysical 
turn of mind, — a turn around which all State rights 
arguments wind themselves up, — sharp-visaged, lean 
of muscle, leaner of conscience, and leanest of veracity, 
he had, after being educated at the government ex- 
pense at West Point, tracked office with a faultless 
scent, shown much pluck during the Black Hawk and 
Mexican wars, gnawed the bone of repudiation in 
Mississippi, and was now ready to bay at Federal 
flocks wherever they appeared. Like John Brown, 
Stonewall Jackson, and those hard Scotch fighters who 
prayed before the direst slaughters, he was most devout 
just before writing those calm-looking, philosophy- 
streaked messages, which massacred truth with a 
glaived hand, and shamed fiction by the recital of atro- 
cities which had no foundation, except at Anderson- 
ville and in the Libby Prison at Eichmond. 

While these active heats were rasjinw on the edees 



COTTON-SEEDS SPROUT. 463 

of the government, cold chaos brooded at the centre. 
Through the rank growth of cotton, threatening to 
overtop everything national, only fire-flies still. 

At last the weary days vanished. Fourth of March 
came, and Mr. B. went away — to his own place. 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 

OUR NEWER NATIONAL ALBUM. 

The Second Generation of our Great Men nearer in Time but not in 
Afiection. — Several sufficient Reasons therefor. — Ingenious Biog- 
raphers confusing our Verdicts over old Offenders. — A Latin Quotation 
to prove an Original Remark. — Why we should not sticli to old Opin- 
ions. — Sketches of Clay, Calhoun, and Webster. — Parallels do not 
always run at equal Distances. — Three Fates. — Original Anecdote 
of Webster. — Of Lewis Cass and Thomas H. Benton. — Why double- 
chinned Persons are satisfactory. — The Plutocrats Girard and Astor; 
how they made Fortunes, and how much. — John Marshall as a Judge, 
and John Trumbull as a Painter. — Albert Gallatin skims American 
Cream. — Rembrandt Peale and Washington Allston described. — Why 
Felix Grundy, S. S. Prentiss, J. J. Crittenden, Samuel Houston, D. D. 
Tompkins, and Others, were like Shoots grafted upon hardy Native 
Stocks. — The Senate illuminated by J. M. Berrien, S. L. Southard, 
W. C. Preston, etc., Legare, and Butler. — A full-length Portrait of 
Winfield Scott. — Irving delineated. — Drake, Halleck, and Paulding. 
— Fenimore Cooper descanted upon. — Science illustrated by Silli- 
man, Hare, and Rush. — Descriptions of Prescott, Mrs. Sedgwick, 
Greenough, and Hawthorne. — How well the Second Set persuaded the 
Eighteenth Century over into the Nineteenth. 

BETWEEN the death of Washington and the mid- 
dle of the nineteenth centiiry grew up a second 
and numerous generation of great men. Although 
nearer to us in time, they are not so near to our affec- 
tions as the elder set. Most of this younger race some 
of us have seen ; and they have thus lost a certain his- 
toric grandeur and magnified proportion, always lent 
by hazy distance to far-off objects. Most of them 
have been the subjects of newspaper attack, of conver- 



OUR NEWER NATIONAL ALBUM. 465 

sational controversy, of party assault and defence 
equally damaging, and so have become doubtfully, per- 
haps disagreeably, familiar. Many of them have been 
brought into the jurisdiction of our partisan praises 
and censures for offences against our political principles 
or passing tastes. Some have been despatched thence 
with Arizona justice, others by New York-equity. Now 
we have reluctantly dismissed some with Scotch ver- 
dicts of " not proven," with lurking suspicions more 
injurious than a positive Saxon condemnation of " guil- 
ty " ; and anon, we have banished others to the penal 
settlements of our criminal domain. 

Ingenious biographers, taking up characters hitherto 
surrendered to the public executioner, asking for re- 
views of judgments alleged to be hasty, and setting 
forth, in an attractive way, features which even crimi- 
nals share with the unindicted and facts unstained, 
perhaps, with the one great crime which slew their 
reputations, have recently argued for new trials with a 
convincing sophistiy that few can resist after dinner, 
and which captivates by its audacious novelty. All of 
us have discovered what Tacitus long ago so tersely 
expressed, — our readiness to listen to scandal, and our 
proneness to praise ourselves for our leniency to the 
maligned : — 

" Livor et obtrectatio pronis auribus accipiuntur ; 
quippe adulationi foedum crimen servitutis, malignitati 
falsa species libertatis inest." 

If the puzzled are generally unsafe, the censorious 
are usually unfair judges. 

Members of the same family, too, are among each 
other as likely to do injustice to a fellow-member by 



466 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UJ^ITED STATES. 

their jealous criticisms, as they are apt before stran- 
gers to make themselves and their fellows ridiculous by 
undiscriminating praise. 

Over many mounds in our national cemetery the 
time-stains are growing very dark and the moss thick 
and undisturbed. As we wander among these with 
lips less j)ressed and stern, with perhaps a feeling 
of repenting forgiveness, slow though it be, towards 
those from whom politically or otherwise we have dif- 
fered, and with occasional touches of tenderness, re- 
luctant though at first they may come, for those who 
nobly erred, if err they did, straining for the right but 
missing it from the dimness of the light which they 
carried, let us be sure that in strolling often amid 
these head-stones, we shaU thereby and thereafter be 
better prepared, by turning out our lower selves, to 
turn over profitably and pleasantly the pages of our 
newer National Album which holds a few of their por- 
traits. If on its first leaves we are confronted by the 
faces of those whose lineaments — like Clay's, Cal- 
houn's, Webster's, Grundy's, Van Buren's, Quincy 
Adams's, Jackson's, and others — are associated with 
watch-words that touch party animosities that were 
born in us we know not how or when, and survive we 
know not wliy, we can, at least, learn to be justly proud 
of wliat has floated out from the drift-wood and dirty 
foam of ephemeral politics, which now no longer con- 
ceal their sturdy and solid timber growths. 

Clay, Calhoun, and Webster ! How much good 
ink was thrown uselessly away in bespattering them 
with blame or praise for the half-century during which 
they actively and industriously braided the public 



OUR NEWER NATIONAL ALBUM, 467 

history of America through their triple biographies. 
Of this triumvirate, Mr. Clay was born in 1777, the 
two others five years later ; Mr. Calhoun received the 
baptism of death in 1850, two years before his life- 
long competitors. They were the three American 
Fates, holding the distaff, the tliread, and the shears 
of its history and administration. Utterly dissimilar 
in the place and circumstances of their births, educa- 
tions, trainings, cultures, and courses, they yet supplied 
for each other the only parallels over that wide tract 
of time through which their prolonged lives reached. 
In the House and in the Senate, sometimes on the 
same side, but oftener congenially opposed, yet ever 
divided from each other by rival ambitions, they 
ennobled the scenes in which they spent such large 
forces. The American Titans, they tossed heavy bars 
of logic with such ease, wrestled with such matching- 
power and balanced success, that we, growing up to 
the gigantic spectacles, almost lose the consciousness 
of the unwonted masteries that have so grandly played 
before us. And yet, somehow, for all this, compara- 
tively little love gathers in our hearts as we look at 
those well-remembered faces ; the large, continental 
visage of Henry Clay, mapping a liemisphere of vast 
thoughts and generous though partisan currents of 
action ; the lofty sternness of John C. Calhoun, cast 
in a Cato-like mould, heroic and defiant ; and the 
square-blocked, cubical, almost repulsive mass, out- 
lined into the head of Daniel Webster, which looks, or 
rather is looked at, as if it had for several centuries 
capped the pyramid of Cheops, and had been finally 
taken down with state ceremonies and transplanted by 



468 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




OUR NEWER NATIONAL ALBUM. 469 

the Pasha to America, as a testimony of his concep- 
tion of our large exceptional growth. 

Sadder than a professed comedy or a prepared fu- 
neral oration over a rich but bad man is the unsatisfied 
ambition of such tough athletes in the political arena, 
who, after a long life of great rough play, break up 
into common earth, and form the subjects for Com- 
mencement day or prize compositions in an open 
grove, where young ladies in white, bound in blue- 
belting-ribbons, summon their uneasy ghosts before 
the dull-eyed umpires. From what a cold well-depth 
sprang to the curb of Webster's lips those soliloquiz- 
ing words which, a few days before his death, over- 
flowed from a disappointed life. Sitting in an open 
doorway at Marshfield, propped up by pillows, he 
looked out upon his favorite herd of cattle, whicli 
were driven up for the last inspection of their attached 
owner. As the fine animals passed and turned their 
large eyes upon him, — some pausing and looking a 
fond recollection into his scarcely wasted face, — he 
ejaculated, as his thoughts turned backward over the 
slights of party and the disappointments of an un- 
satisfied life : " I love the honest faces of animals. 
They look what they mean." 

Arriving in the world the same year with Mr. 
Webster, Mr. Calhoun, and each other, Lewis Cass, 
portly in presence as in learning, varied capacity, and 
many-sided culture, and Thomas H. Benton, as solid 
as the bullion wdiich a dim tradition mentions as 
formerly found in these United States, meet us with 
that full-orbed spherical satisfaction which double- 
chinned persons are fortunate in imparting, if not of 



470 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

feeling themselves. The " Eecollections of Thirty 
Years in the Senate " would, one would think, be 
enough to reduce any mortal to very attenuated pro- 
portions. Fortunate is the memory of any M. C. 
which is constructed like a mining-sieve, letting 
through the superabundant dirt and retaining only the 
loosely silted ore. 

Andeew Jackson and John Quincy Adams, des- 
tined to be rivals for the Presidency in the fifty- 
seventh and again in the sixty-first years of their 
lives, were severally born nine years before the Dec- 
laration of Independence. Their lives were as unlike 
as their faces. The former passed his first score of 
years in the hard struggles for a livelihood, and mostly 
amid the scenes made memorable by the cavalry 
swords of Marion and Sumter and the pen of William 
Gilmore Sims ; the latter spent his in the study of 
what could best round up a capable mind by disci- 
pline and learning, and in the equally advantageous 
culture derived from the society of his accomplished 
mother and experienced father. While the stormy 
incidents of an eventful military life in Florida and 
Georgia, intercalated with court-martials and official 
censures, scored in Jackson's face the notches which, 
until his death in 1845, kept truthful tally with his 
warm, violent, generous, resentful, and stern history ; 
over the round, uncreased face of Adams ran the 
smoothing-iron of literary tastes and pursuits, keep- 
ing down the ruffling disturbances of a naturally pas- 
sionate nature, and the ridges which the excitements 
from 1824 to 1828, and the antislavery agitations in 
the latter part of his life, would have otherwise left. 



OUR NEWER NATIONAL ALBUM. 471 

Jackson's virtues deserve signal praise, and Adams's 
vices emphatic censure ; since the former grew up 
under circumstances as unfavorable to their existence 
as a young ladies' seminary for modesty, or a New 
York sheriffs office for integrity ; and the latter amid 
forces as unassailing as a prayer-meeting to piety or 
sleep to pure thoughts. 

Types of American character in many respects are 
the originals of the two thin-faced portraits to which we 
next turn, — types in their foreign birth, their obscure 
social belongings, and their shrewd and successful busi- 
ness ventures, — Stephen Gieard, coming into life in 
1750, at Bordeaux, France, as acid as the claret of 
his native city, and commanding, like it, very profitable 
prices by transportation to this country, a sailor's son, 
and until his nineteenth year himself a sailor ; and 
John Jacob Astor, his junior by thirteen years, off- 
spring of a poverty-w^orried peasant, ushered first into 
a cabin at Waldorf, near Heidelberg, where black bread 
and small hopped beer were all that incessant labor 
could procure. The former lived eighty-one, the latter 
eighty-five years upon our planet ; and by faithfully 
gathering up from its surface, water and land, from its 
ships, stores, and offices, and from its furred and un- 
funded animals, the gains which persistent early rising, 
industry, and ceaseless penny-turning accumulate, left 
fortunes, the first of nine, the last of twenty millions 
of dollars. 

" Sic itur ad Astra." 

The Astral-lamp Library, obtained by funds be- 
queathed by a benefaction, like Girard's College, ap- 
preciative of what its donor had himseK missed, sheds 



472 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

its genial light on many a poor scholar's desk. If each 
legacy has been somewhat diverted from its testamen- 
tary direction, perhaps the best excuse may be found 
in the reason why married women were not allowed to 
have their wills after death, because they had them so 
much while living. 

John Marshall, to whose unmistakably pure- 
minded face we turn in safe admiration, was one of 
those types of leadership, one of those representatives 
of schools, who, violently liked or disliked when living, 
has by the touch of death been canonized among the 
white-robed of the nation. An incarnation, M'hen ahve, 
of Federalism, his ermine has become so white under the 
fulling of time and by contrast with robes since worn, and 
his grasp of the judicial balances was, as is now seen, 
so firm, so unimpassioned and unshaken by a nervous 
partisanship, that he has already passed into the very 
small list of judges, whose lofty character, stainless 
purity, large judicial capacities and force, are like solid 
cool rocks amid the ever-shifting scenes and temper- 
atures of a varied landscape. 

An artist's head sits manifestly on the shoulders of 
John Trumbull, born in 1756, a year after John Mar- 
shall, and living eight years beyond him. At his death 
in 1843, he left but few as aged. His busy pencil 
dropped in 1775 for the musket, and, resumed in 1777, 
has perpetuated in fifty-seven historical pictures, with 
the fidelity and love of personal friendship, the portrait- 
ures of most of the leading actors in the first period of 
our national story. He was President of the Academy 
of Fine Arts, from its formation, in 1816, until it gave 
place, in 1825, to the Academy of Design. His dress. 



OUR NEWEE NATIONAL ALBUM. 473 

it will be observed, was formally and scrupulously in the 
mode ; Ms address was as dressy as his wristbands and 
frills. Quick-eyed mothers would at once, as he took 
his seat, warn the children, always attracted towards 
clean vestments, " not to dirty the gentleman's clothes." 

In 1761 Albert Gallatin was born. Eelated to 
Neckar, he seems to have borrowed at the same time 
much of the financial ability of the French minister, 
and the ready wit, graceful imagination, and forceful 
word-power of the minister's brilliant daughter, Ma- 
dame de Stael. He crammed eighty-eight years full of 
remarkable activities, as ambassador to Eussia, France, 
Great Britain, and Holland, as member of Congress, 
and as a weighty yet captivating and vivacious writer 
'on banks, public credit, currency, and those subjects, 
ever rising, like cream, on the public pans, wdiich are 
skimmed by the most skilfully handled ladles. 

Turning the page, we meet the thought-bearing faces 
of Eembrandt Peale, born in 1778, and below, that 
of his brother artist, Washington Allston, the Amer- 
ican Paul Veronese, who, Peale's junior by a year, 
ceased his earthly work in 1853, seven years before 
him. The serenity of congenial pursuits gilds their 
portraitures, and lingers like an aureola around their 
heads. Upon Allston's face there seems spread a lis- 
tening look, as if straining to catch far-off notes, 
mingled with that gentle hush and composure, as if 
stilled by tliat music so subtily described by Words- 
worth, which 

" Born of murmuring sound, had passed into his face." 

A tree does not show more markedly than man the 



474 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

results of ancestral care, wealth, and leisurely culture. 
Numerous are the faces and histories scattered all 
through our national album, which are signalized by a 
curious mixture of original forest wildness and park 
growths newly begun, cultivated shoots grafted upon 
hardy native stocks, and giving off large unsymmetri- 
cally shaped fruits, — fruits less sour than the natural, 
but less genial, plump, mellow, and blooming than the 
full-nursed growth. Of these were, in oratory, Felix 
Geundy, whose exposed youth shot up on the wilder- 
ness frontier of Kentucky, where " death was in almost 
every bush, and an ambuscade in every thicket," and 
who attained, in Tennessee, a large altitude and breadth ; 
Sargeant S. Pkentiss, transplanted from among the 
pines of Maine to the coarse richness of a Mississippi 
soil, and through whose waving tops swept sometimes 
tlie storm of invective, sometimes the seolian strains 
of tenderest, soul-trembling breathings ; John J. Crit- 
tenden, a farmer's boy, born in 1785, whose prickly 
logic sheathed, like a burr, the smooth-meated chest- 
nut ; and, among statesmen, Samuel Houston of Texas, 
shaggy-barked, yet with much tasselling wealth of 
flower at the top ; Daniel D. Tompkins of New York, 
and a large number of others, strong saplings, pushing 
up in brave defiance of adversities, some wrought into 
bureaus, others inlaying cabinets, — American woods, 
some still sappy and cross-grained, but making as good 
state furniture as an untechnical taste has hitherto 
been content to demand or use. 

Glancing through our book, — in which we treasure 
only the portraits of the departed, — we dwell with 
satisfaction upon a group of high-toned, conscientious. 



OUR NEWER NATIONAL ALBUM. 475 

Christian statesmen, who honored public office in their 
persons, and shed upon the Senate a light so effulgent, 
that the many opaque substances, so often thrust into 
it, have not been able wholly to absorb : John Mac- 
PHERSON Berrien, born in 1781 ; Theodore Freling- 
HUYSEN and Samuel L. Southard, in 1787 ; and Wil- 
liam C. Preston in 1794; with whom are worthily 
associated Hugh S. Legare, whose fine face brought 
its welcome into every company, as his radiant mind 
sparkled and scintillated over every subject ; and Ben- 
jamin F. Butler of New York, whose clear-cut phys- 
iognomy, like an antique on a fine stone, shows hand- 
somely in every setting. 

Winfield Scott came into life in 1786, and so crys- 
tallized about himself each of the three wars in which 
he was the principal magnet, — the maritime contest of 
1812, the Mexican war in 1847, and the opening of 
the Eebellion in 1861, — that his calm front and majes- 
tic presence would readily single him out as the model 
figure for our American Mars. Like a great elm in the 
Berkshire valley he stands, massive in strength of 
trunk, spreading out in varied branches of learning, 
special study, and active experience, and dropping his 
pendulous, wide-circuiting limbs and generous foliage 
over a broad expanse of rich meadow. Under this 
vast, wide-reaching, many-dropping banyan-tree his- 
tory seems to gather in a sleepy, contented calm. 

Dearly do we all love to pause over the beautifully 
bordered page which holds the genial, sunny-faced 
visage of Washington Irving. He was foiir years 
old when Washington delivered his first Inaugural. 
Through aU the nineteenth century he shines, like a 



476 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

blessed presence, until his ecKpse, in 1859. How our 
landscapes, the lives of our best and worthiest, the 
graceful legends of our rivers, mountains, prairies, and 
historical sites, — barren, voiceless, and dumb before, 
warm into life, and stretch out their living hands in 
tender entreaty, instinct and round with charms of per- 
suasive beauty, as, like the prophet over the child, he 
stretches himself over them ! 

Of some of his associates and compeers, still happily 
spared to us, we cannot speak ; for the living are too 
numerous to be enumerated, and too near to be 
sketched ; but of Joseph Eodman Drake, whose brief 
twenty-five years of life exhaled such beautiful and 
deathless creations as the Culprit Fay ; of Fitz-Greene 
Halleck, his companion and fellow-laborer, whose rare 
humor stole into delicious song, as sprites are said to 
play hide-and-seek in buttercups and honeysuckles ; 
and of James E. Paulding, linked in literary work as 
by family ties with Irving, and whose diversified genius 
gives him a large, if not a choice place in our Wal- 
halla, — of all these kindly faces we delight to keep 
copies in our album. 

Like Irving, fortunate in the enjoyment of a wide 
European reputation, but less fortunate than he in 
securing the undivided hearts of his countrymen, — 
whose early history, aboriginal legends, forest scenery, 
and naval characters he has so well tapestried in nov- 
els, essay, biography, and history, — James Fenimore 
Cooper, born in 1789, has, by his sea tales, caused 
many a mother's heart to yearn after her runaway boy, 
and by his land stories, garnered up many of our best 
sheaves of fiction into a national stack. As we gaze 



OUR NEWER NATIONAL ALBUM. 477 

on his large, square, massive forehead, we forget his 
sharply feathered arrows, aimed at our national faults, 
which generally, of course, missed the conscience and 
touched only the liver. Eemembering " The Pioneers," 
" The Last of the Mohicans," " The Spy," " Pilot," and 
" Eed Eover," we fall to blessing the creations which 
stalk over our rough fences, and brush away our raw 
villages, uproarious with faces of civilized red-men, 
and so endeavor to get by, as boys do a haunted place 
at nightfall, the recollection of those twenty-two libel 
suits, whose damages he found, like most plaintiffs in 
that species of legal fiction, to end in the payment 
of the costs out of his own pocket. 

Others there are, too, whose physiognomies recall to 
us pleasantly the explorers in science, workers amid 
Nature's secrets, earlier than those who now push their 
daring way into her very robing-room : Bei^jamin SlL- 
LIMAN, the elder, who came in 1779, and through a 
long life lectured so many into the pleasant idea that 
tliey knew something of geology and chemistry, and 
through his "Journal of Science," established in 1818, 
gathered up the mental products of his fellow-harvest- 
ers ; PtOBERT Hare, two years younger, who, at the 
age of twenty, invented the compound blow-pipe, and 
up to his death, in 1858, continued his discoveries, until 
he left, by his spiritual explorations, his scientific breth- 
ren behind him ; and Benjamin Eush, born in 1780, 
who by his tasteful style, made boluses less distasteful, 
and even gave the muses such a draught that they be- 
came delirious over his medical pages. 

William H. Prescott, reserved until nearly the close 
of the eighteenth century ere he was born, and becom- 



478 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ing blind in outward vision at the age of eighteen, so 
clarified his inner sight and quickened it to the percep- 
tion of new beauties, and so perfected himself by the 
grace, gentleness, and cheerful gayety of a happy nature, 
that Peru, Mexico, the times of Ferdinand, Isabella, and 
Philip II., filtrated through them, glow in splendor and 
are inwrought and outwrought in such delicacy of 
color and such noble boldness as to make him stand 
out in singularly beautiful proportions to thousands 
of loving eyes, that have never rested, and will now 
never rest, upon his fine classic head. 

Stop we a moment to admire the intellectual fea- 
tures of Catherine M. Sedgwick, bom in 1798, whose 
wise essays and wiser fictions lie upon so many ta- 
bles ; the calm head of Horatio Greenotjgh, who pro- 
duced his first work, the " Chanting Cherubs," upon a 
commission from Fenimore Cooper, brought out the 
earliest American group in marble, and became a very 
Medusa, turning many Americans into stone ; and 
finally the grand, quaint physiognomy of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, given to us in 1804, and just withdrawn, 
whose genial tales and humorous descriptions will 
keep his memory as odorous as woodbines around the 
porches of houses seven-gabled, mossed, newly Gothic, 
or indifferently green-shuttered, and up to their eaves 
in white paint. 

Unwillingly we close the list ; for many are worthy 
to be added, who have laid their aching brains away, 
and more who are coining from their living thoughts a 
mintage more national than greenbacks and not half so 
soiled. 

All but two who are named in this our newer 



OUR NEWER NATIONAL ALBUM. 479 

album were born in the last century, and drew over its 
wealth with them and piled it up on our side. Few 
of them lived less than three, and several more than 
fourscore years ; showing that the possession of intel- 
lect often preserves their owners to a longevity as great 
as office or a life estate. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS ; OR, LINCOLN'S AD- 
MINISTRATION. 

1861-1865. 

IN THREE DIVISIONS. 

Division First. 

Cotton Veils hide the Union. March 4, 1861, to Janitart 1, 1862. 

Striking Historical Contrasts of professed Virtue and cruel Enforcement. 

— Tbe American Fetich ; its strange, passionate Worship and armed 
Adoration. — The Freshet of Slavery traced from its small Beginnings. 

• — Mr. Lincoln over its Ridges lands in Washington. — A Striking 
Announcement, and who it struck. — Of Seward, Cameron, and Chase. 

— A Naval Joke. — A Wry Fort makes Wry Faces. — An American 
Nightmare. — Watching with the Sleeper. — Sparing the Rod and 
getting the Ramrod. — Call for Seventy-five Thousand Ramrods. — 
Massachusetts Boys and Baltimore Hards. — Busses and Blunder- 
busses. — Few OfBce-Seekers, but many Gun-Holders in Washington in 
April, 1861. — The English Telescope and the Wonders it discovered. 

— A Dual View. — An Official Talk between two Lords. — A Procla- 
mation to restrain Englishmen. — A Parallel. — War Materials, Forts, 
etc., generously given away by Loose-handed Custodians. — Twiggs 
inclined as Tree is bent. — Cotton Curtain before Washington; and 
a near View of it by General Mansfield. — Colonel Ellsworth. — But- 
ler and Bethel. — Lyons in Missouri. — McClellan moves into Virginia; 
what he found. — A Wise Man flees when a real Man pursueth. — 
Bull's Run and General Run. — A Discovery and Noise over it. — 
Stonewall Jackson and Praying Soldiers. — Piety and Powder. — A 
Drill-Ground near Washington. — General Lee's First Kicks against 
the Pricks. — Du Pont at Port Royal. — Mason, Slidell, and Vigilant 
Friends. — John C. Breckenridge a striking Sign-Board. — War in t)ie 
Mississippi Valley. — Kentucky and her coy Ways. — A Spartan Le- 
onidas and Greek Ulysses. — Christmas Eve, 1861. 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 481 

" "O OBESPIEERE," says a terse, sentence-packing 
-L V essayist, "would slay one half of France to get 
the other half to foUow his principles of virtue." 

The cotton rebeUion is another illustration of the 
same horrible tenderness, the same selfish loveliness, 
the same unsentimental sentimentalism. 

Like the strange histories of ScyUa, of Marius of 
Simon de Montfort and his helmed soldiery against 
the AValdenses, of Alva in the Netherlands, of Philip 
II., and of Claverhouse, in Scotland, it exhibits a cour- 
age, endurance, sacrifices, and heroism which exalt to 
compass ends which debase and brutalize human nature 
Setting up in the second half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, and m free, much-reading America, a fetich for 
worship, brought from Africa, slimy with snakes foul 
cruel, deformed, and misshapen, its singularly enthusias- 
tic votaries, after insisting by books, tracts, primers by 
phdosophic essay, bound treatise, and unbound poetry 
m Congxess, conventions, lecture-rooms, prayer-meet- 
ings, horse-races, and in all places, seasonable or un- 
seasonable, thirsty or wet, that the fetich, thou-h 
repudiated by all civilized people, was the true aSd 
undoubted patron of government, society, wealth pro- 
gress, and human, i. e. white-skinned happiness, at last 
seized musket and sword to maintain and perpetuate 
her horrid rites, although this maintenance should 
overturn and waste all other shrines. 

The cotton-gin struck, in 1793, springs all over the 
slave States, whose multiplying flows so gathered head 
m i«21 as to require damming back. The Missouri 
dike was erected. The pent waters, however, were 
found so profitable for foreign miU-owners, for over-shot 



482 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

feeders to Northern shelves, for commercial pockets, 
and political ballot-boxes, as well as such wealth-dis- 
tributing streams over the growing breadths and easy 
luxuries of their Southern owners, that expedients were 
devised to swell their volume, area, and back-water 
power. The dike, cut in 1854, let out the accumulated 
deluge into new sluice-ways, which promised to some 
increased profits, but which produced great ravages in 
many ways, and at last set towards maelstroms, do-vvTi 
whose gurgling throats were sucked, not only the pas- 
sive and floating citizen, and the compromising, timid 
politician, but much of the life and wealth of the 
nation at large. 

Over the angry ridges, rapidly rising on the 4th 
of March, 1861, Mr. Lincoln, uneasy at the white caps 
crisping the dark swells, and himself in disguise, 
landed at the national wharf in Washington. AYith- 
out disguise, however, he at once, in a distinct, calm 
voice, announced the principles upon which he pro- 
posed to meet the menacing flood, namely, not to inter- 
fere with its black tides in States where they were 
legally channelled, nor to create any new courses in 
Territories in which they had not surged, and steadily 
to enforce, in spite of all obstructions, the existing 
rules, regulations, and laws both North and South. 

This announcement struck the knob of the national 
shield, and its metallic notes quivered through the air. 
The three commissioners, despatched from the some- 
how gathered Confederate assemblage at Montgomery, 
heard the vibrations the morning of their arrival, 
March 5th, but failed to shout loud enough to be 
heard themselves, and returned speedily Avith their 
cross-barred messaoe. 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 



483 




cO^^ 



Cotton Supreme. 



484 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 

Attention was immediately directed to the ravelled 
American stocking rapidly running down. The blue 
yarn of the navy was taken up stitch by stitch. The 
threads of the little army were picked up, lying loosely 
around at a distance from the capital, and, by much 
knotting and splicing, were put upon the old, rusty, 
war-needles for work. It was very sad business for 
the gentle-minded Lincoln, although helped by Mr. 
Seward in the State Department, — a very vigorous and 
manifold letter- writer, — by the wide-headed Chase in 
the Treasury, by the strong-knuckled Cameron in the 
noisy War Bureau, and by that long-bearded Gideon 
Welles, whose unthatched upper story became in time, 
like a naval depot, the receptacle of a great deal of 
odd material, most of it too old to be serviceable. In 
truth, with his funny ways, dropping anchor wiien he 
should be making steam, bothered with new inven- 
tions, gun bores and spiral devices, which he had never 
seen at Hartford, and quite incomprehensible often by 
any one, puzzled by stern duties and running about to 
know w^here the ship's waste was, the latter old gen- 
tleman was about the only joke which went about for 
four years. 

Notice by the government of its intention to add to 
the eighty men in Fort Sumter drew upon that little 
stone pentagon a lively cannonade of thirty-six hours, 
by General Beauregard, the Confederate military leader, 
distorting its resolute visage, and causing wry faces 
everywhere throughout the North, and very many 
among the strikers at the South. 

The first whizzing shot was the first uneasy spasm 
in that horrible nightmare wliich crept over America 
and held it bound for four years. 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 485 

For the sake of human nature ; for the sake of our 
common past, and our now dawning brighter future, 
we would fain draw over the face of the disturbed 
sleeper a veil, which should but dimly delineate, if it 
did not altogether hide from view, the uncoffined 
ghastliness. The purposes of history, however, forbid 
us, nurses as we are in trouble, as boon companions in 
feasting, to quit the room; and so holding still, as 
best we can, the hand of genial Humor, we sit down 
amid the uncomic scenes of a fratricidal strussle. 

Through the evening silences which followed the 
evacuation of Fort Sumter, April 14, 1861, were heard 
at Montgomery and in other Confederate cities rhetor- 
ical voices of gratulation at the humbled pride, flag, 
and prosperity of the North, and predictions of bold 
equestrian sallies into Washington, Philadelphia, New 
York, and Boston ; at the North, wails of sorrow, sud- 
den questions of the causeless blows on the tingling 
national cheek, mixed with remorseful self-accusations 
at the weak petting, which had so encouraged unre- 
strained tempers as to invite to this public breaking 
of the family crockery and this unconcealable family 
disgrace. " Had not the rod been so long spared," 
— was the general feeling, — " we should now be 
spared the use of the ramrod." The next morning, 
however, Mr. Lincoln proclaimed the need of seventy- 
five thousand ramrods, with good men to accompany 
them to Washington. At the same time he asked 
the wise men to meet at the capital in July for con- 
sultation. Ere the next daybreak, a thousand Massa- 
chusetts lads were on their way towards the Potomac, 
shining in new-burnished steel and new polished love 



486 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

for that old Union mother, whose goodness had been so 
steady and uniform as hitherto to excite no manifested 
return. On the 19 th of April they reached Baltimore, 
and were passing through in the horse-cars, when they 
were set upon by a bad lot of hards and softs of that 
city, — as others before and since have frequently been 
assailed in their transit, by railway and hotel runners. 
Other regiments soon followed from "the teeming 
North, through all her unfrozen loins." Guns were 
got down from rusted hooks ; shoulder-straps straight- 
ened ; blunderbusses and other busses given and taken; 
officers beaten up from behind ploughshares to be 
beaten in first skirmishes into good leaders ; and 
shields from all the free States were clasped around 
the waist of the capital. Never were there so many 
gun-holders, nor so few office-seekers, at "Washington 
in the month of April. 

The soft velveted hand which caressed was now 
stiffened into the steel gauntlet to smite. 

Meanwhile the English government, employed since 
1783 in looking across at us through the large end of 
its telescope, suddenly got its eye at the other extreme, 
and discovered the monstrous size of this country, the 
large population, and unmanifested pluck of the nine 
somehow seceded States, and, to her, the very obvious 
absence of any ties or mutual necessity between two 
such admirably designed single nations. This was the 
almost unanimous opinion, too, of the well-dressed 
classes ; although some Bright Englishmen, and espe- 
cially the hard toilers in the manufacturing districts, — 
although working in smoke, — saw more clearly the 
object and design as well as the final end of the com- 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 487 

mencing difficulty than those whose near-sightedness 
spread a film over all their American observations. 

"The Hunited States 'ave too many people," said 
Lord John. 

" Haltogether, yes," replied Lord Palmerston. 

" Suppose that they should fight ? " inquired Lord 
John. 

" Well, two heads are better than one," replied the 
facetious Palmerston. 

"And so are two customers," rejoined Lord John, 
wiping his nose with a cotton pocket-handkerchief. 

And forthwith they issued a proclamation of neu- 
trality in the name of the Queen, whose heart was 
no more in its sentiments than her hand in its com- 
position. It was thought at the time by many people 
to be very smart ; and so it was very smart, altogether too 
smart. It was a state fiction, — a fancy creation, looking 
in legal phrase as if all the English were bent on rush- 
ing into the prophesied something, — a buffalo-hunt, a 
Long Island race, or steamboat explosion ; — for what 
the little flurry was about, or would be when the 
solemn state warning was given, no one knew, — 
unless they were violently restrained by the British 
government. It was the unnecessarily vehement dec- 
laration of the very disinterested old maid to the un- 
suspecting, quiet young man, quite innocent of such 
audacious thoughts as her fears excited and suggested : 
" Now, if you kiss me I shall resist. I shall. Don't 
you try it. Now, there, don't come towards me. 
Don't make such a noise, for everybody will hear 
you. Hands off. Don't try it. I shall scream. 
Quit now. Don't disturb the neighborhood. Hands 



488 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

off, I tell you. I won't have anything to do with it." 
The warning was as piquant and promotive of the 
practice deprecated, as the landlord's to the ostler, 
never to grease the teeth of traveller's horses, for if he 
should they could not eat oats. 

The strikers in Arkansas and North Carolina, in 
May, contrived somehow to get up delegates to meet 
those from the other Southern States at Eichmond, 
the newly selected gathering-place of Confederated 
counsellers. 

The insurrection commenced to grow. The warned 
boy began seriously to think of the audacity from 
which he was so solemnly conjured to desist. 

Federal war stores, magazines, and naval materials 
were handed over to the new State claimants by their 
loose- wristed custodians, who, although educated by the 
Federal government, generously gave away her projDerty 
on the principle of that testator, who requested his 
own debtors, forthwith after his decease, to pay what 
they owed to his executors, and nobly forgave his 
creditors the debts which he owed them. Floydism 
became as fashionable South as cotton, butternut- 
colored clothing and long hair. Just as the tree was 
bent the Twiggs inclined. At Little Kock, Pensacola, 
Portsmouth, Virginia, and in Texas, large masses of 
stores, cannon, guns, and naval materials were trans- 
ferred, like the allegiance of the officers in charge, to 
the strange African fetich. It looked as if the Ameri- 
can people were moving out of the lower story of their 
large, constitutional bazaar into the upper lofts, and 
were giving away generously a part of the expensive 
fixtures to the new incoming tenant. 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 489 

In May some Confederate cotton curtains, striped 
with rough military lines, were hung before Washing- 
ton. They concealed much real weakness and want of 
furniture behind them, and enabled those, who kept up 
a confused shouting in the darkened recesses and away 
from the front, to convey an impression of numbers 
which did not exist. 

Thirteen thousand Federal troops, — part of the 
seventy-five thousand, — led by General Mansfield, de- 
siring to get a nearer view of the curtain, crossed over 
the Potomac to Arlington Heights. The Virginia soil, it 
was found, no more spurned Northern feet than its cul- 
tivation was spurned by the hands of its white owners. 
The next day Colonel Ellsworth, with a Zouave regi- 
ment, entered the ancient town of Alexandria. Seeing 
the new flag swaying in its sluggish air, he tore down, 
as he supposed, the fetich symbol ; but received almost 
on the instant a fatal shot, and was borne away with 
slow requiems to the vast Northern cemetery, in which 
new graves were soon rapidly to be opened. The 
struck symbol of the Confederacy was not cut down, 
but only lowered to half-mast, emblem of American 
hopes and pride. 

May 9, Mr. Lincoln made a new call for forty-two 
thousand men. As quickly as May blossoms come to the 
expected call of the showier they came in rosy-hearted 
responses. General Butler hastened with twelve thou- 
sand men to Fortress Monroe, whence on the 9th of 
June he sent a detachment to Big Bethel. No wres- 
tling-match, however, came off there, and no pillar of 
stone, of course, set up. Meanwhile, Missouri, Mary- 
land, and Kentucky, — resisting the second secession 
21* 



490 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

cleavage, started by Virginia, and which had drawn 
after her Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina, — 
trembled with the' forces contending for ascendency in 
their several borders. In the first State, General Jack- 
son attempted in vain to mesmerize Lyons. Failing in 
these passes, he made several upward strokes, destroying 
railroads, bridges, and telegraph wires. But the Fed- 
eral commander, pursuing him to Boonesville, disabled 
his arm from renewing such tricks. Uniting his forces 
with General Sigel's, — making from their junction 
six thousand men, — General Lyons attacked at Wil- 
son's Creek, near Springfield, Ben McCullough and 
Sterling Price, with a force of twenty thousand. 

The attacking party was repulsed, and its brave 
leader killed, but the followers of the Eanger were too 
weary to pursue them. 

In Virginia, early in July, General George B. Mc- 
Clellan, then in his thirty-sixth year, and General 
Eosecrans, in his forty-second, collecting the cream of 
their little armies, skimmed the Confederate pans at 
Eich Mountain, while immediately after, the Confeder- 
ate pails were completely upset or seized by General 
Morris, assisted by some help from Ohio and Indiana, 
at Carrick's Ford. General Eosecrans, flowing towards 
the Southwest, came down like a mountain torrent 
in the Kanawha valley, even flooding such water- 
logged estrays as Henry A. AVise and the indicted 
Floyd. The salt springs of the valley, towards which 
they sped, could not preserve them from becoming 
spoiled, and held ever afterward, even by their 
friends, in bad odor. 

A few days afterwards, the troops near Washington, 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 491 

numbering about 35,000 under General McDowell, 
were moved in a body towards the cvirtain, — which 
was drawn back and back by its supporters to Manassas 
Junction, — where Beauregard, intrenched witlx.27,000 
men, assisted by General Joseph E. Johnston and 16,000 
more close at hand in Winchester, steadied and up- 
held it. As the 35,000 thousand went forward, the 
three months' men, whose time had expired, went back- 
ward, seeking the far rear to the sound of the enemy's 
cannon, until the Federal inspecting force was reduced 
to 18,000. As they approached that historic little rill, 
Bull Eun, they met the combined forces of the Confed- 
erates, and after holding the field against them and 
even advancing upon it, until late in the afternoon, 
they fell into one of those panics, not unfrequent 
among troops, raw or seasoned, in which the wild run 
of frightened bulls or the disordered summersaulting 
and tumbles of a herd of buffaloes is an orderly 
march. A mass of huddling soldiers, civilians, team- 
sters, members of Congress, and other muddled mate- 
rial was thrown upon Washington. The puzzled Con- 
federates, unconscious of victory and of course unpur- 
suing, at length got back to their capital. Discovering 
at last their stupendous victory, they made up for 
lost time by shouts so loud that every European echo 
repeated it, like a very Lurlei. In this big scare were 
many of the leading generals on either side, — among 
those on the Federal, Sherman, Burnside, and Heint- 
zelman ; and on the Confederate, Longstreet, Ewell, 
Early, Bonham, and that praying soldier, Stonewall 
Jackson, then thirty-five years old, and whose saintly, 
fanatical bravery recalls the gallant slaughterers in the 



492 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

civil wars of Scotland, who tempered their prayers 
with bayonet-pushing amens, and ended their fervid 
hacking of enemies with hearty thanksgivings to 
Heaven. 

The losses on either side in men were nearly bal- 
anced, — the Federal dead amounting to 481, and the 
Confederate to 378 ; the Federal wounded to 1011, the 
Confederate to 1489 ; but in prestige, self-respect, and 
that subtle moral force which cannot be weighed even 
by grains or scruples, the advantage was greatly with 
the insurrectionists. 

Congress immediately voted to raise 500,000 men 
for the army, two hundred and fifty millions of dollars 
in money, and to issue fifty millions of treasury-notes. 
The Confederate gathering determined to set 400,000 
men to help the existing 210,000 hold up the cotton 
veil, now becoming so heavy and thick with dust and 
clots, that even Mr. Seward began to doubt whether it 
could be lifted in thirty days. 

In August, Forts Hatteras and Clark were pulled 
by Commodore Stringham into Pamlico Sound. 

For many months the country in front of Washing- 
ton was converted into a vast drill-ground, over which 
Drill-Sergeant McClellan exercised the weary feet of 
over one hundred thousand soldiers, and the wearier 
patience of many millions of citizens. During this 
time the echoes of Bull Eun, as numerous and diversi- 
fied as an Irishman's, haunted the consciences and 
journals of America, and the hollow faith of Europe. 
If it was all quiet on the Potomac, it was very unquiet 
elsewhere. General McClellan was always a believer 
in the Italian proverb. 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 493 

" Chi va piano. 
Va sano : 
Chi va forte, 
Va alia morte,'* 

and so he held his ground near Washington. 

In September, a series of severe skirmishes, lasting 
three days, between General Kobert E. Lee, now fifty- 
three years old, and General Eeynolds, at Cheat Moun- 
tain and Elk Water, Virginia, followed by another 
October 3d at Greenbrier, disagreeably shook up the 
Confederate commander. These first attempts to turn 
against his countrymen the science and skill which he 
had gained at their expense and in their service, were 
creditable to his conscience, if not to his head and 
skiU. 

The sleeper turned over with a sense of smothering, 
as in his nightmare horror he saw the drawn sword of 
his favorite sons pointed at him. 

On the 29th of October a fleet under Commodore 
Du Pont, with General T. W. Sherman and twenty 
thousand men on board, sailed for Port Eoyal, and after 
three elliptical turnings in the harbor, threw out such 
pills as they passed that Forts Walker and Beauregard, 
suddenly swallowing them, fell into such a vertigo, 
that they lost their heads, and tumbled helpless upon 
the ground. To balance this fatal bill of mortality, 
however, the Confederate General Evans, defeated with 
great loss a detachment of two thousand one hundred 
men under General Stone, at Ball's Bluff, when Oregon 
lost one of her best senators and citizens, Colonel E. 
D. Baker. 

The cotton veil was becoming very soiled and flecked. 
November brought out a variety of colors in American 



494 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

affairs, some light with yellow hues, others as dark as 
the gusty season loves to whirl over a surface ever 
freezing and thawing. General Scott retired from the 
chief command of the army, to which General McClel- 
lan succeeded; the lean Davis was" made high-priest 
for six years to the Southern fetich, and Mason and 
Slidell, Confederate commissioners, hurriedly shunning 
Mr. Welles and his cruisers, were captured by Captain 
"Wilkes off the Trent. They were of course promptly 
spied by the large, vigilant English telescope, which, in 
its rapid shifting for the occasion, read Enghsh inter- 
national law backwards, and spelled out our duty from 
our own precedents. The alacrity with which their 
surrender was demanded showed that the still anxious 
young lady had survived the alarm, caused by the un- 
willing kiss six months before, and was desirous to 
escape, in precisely the same way, any further imper- 
tinences. 

John C. Breckenridge now climbed down to grasp 
the depraved prize he had at last so well earned. 
Elected a Senator of the United States at the close of 
the Yice-Presidency in the preceding March, he readily 
took a voluntary oath to support the Constitution of an 
undivided land ; played the spy upon the efforts of its 
government to thwart the attempts to dissever it ; 
and at the close of the session, unable longer to profit 
by his office and oath, took a brigadier's commission 
and a new oath against a coimtry which had loaded his 
family and himself with its highest honors. Once the 
cherished type of a chivalrous gentleman, he engrafted 
upon the abused name of chivalry definitions more re- 
proachful than those which spring from the addled 



4g^- 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 495 

eccentricities of Don Quixote ; his old friends, if any 
such survive, must long have desired to feel that he 
had only lost an arm in a service which. Undistin- 
guished by any advantage brought to it by a man who 
had deserted everything for it, sunk the remains of a 
character once high, and an intellect once brilliant, 
to a depth compared with which history refuses an ex- 
ample. Others may plead some excuse, more or less 
admissible, for their armed heresies : Davis, that his 
was a logical sequence to his lifelong convictions of 
State supremacy ; Toombs, Cobb, Stephens, and others, 
that their States dragged them out ; Floyd, the neces- 
sity of putting money in his purse ; Wise, the loss of a 
guiding intelligence. But to not one of these can John 
C. Breckenridge point to mitigate the just severities of 
that moral verdict which, in cases of such cumulated 
guilt, can only appease the general uneasiness at the 
exhibition of depravity so fathomless, by the most ex- 
emplary damages. Looking into the dreadful chasms, 
down which his example cast so many others ; the 
maimed cripples, the hollow-eyed widows. Justice slain 
by stabs in the back, exiles from poor homes smitten 
by the bludgeons of secret agents, even humorous His- 
tory grows stern-featured and allows a saddening pity 
to cloud her habitual smile, as she flings her knotted 
whip over the shoulders of high-born guilt. 

As the year 1861 drew towards its close, the war, 
dropping in the old traditional path of empire, trended 
westward and seated itself in the valley of the Mis- 
sissippi. Ulysses S. Grant, then thirty -nine years old, 
newly assigned to the District of Cairo, took Paducah, 
Kentucky ; and settled on Belmont, — not August, the 



496 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

banker, but a small town in Missouri, on the banks of the 
Mississippi, opposite Columbus, Kentucky. This latter 
place was then held by that mitred Spartan warrior, 
Leonidas Polk, who had left the light of the star which 
guided wise men to the Babe, for the hazy star of 
the major-general, — one of the dim twinklers in that 
milky-way which, after four years' watering, disap- 
peared from the sight of even telescopic gazers. 

Gradually large forces were drawn to the State of 
Kentucky, — nicely balancing on neutral ground, — 
while her reluctant hand was coyly withdrawn from 
any Union by her guardian, Governor Magoffin, and 
was thereby sought with greater ardor by each suitor. 
The Confederates offered her a bridal Pillow, but the 
Federals sent Ulysses, that wise and silent Greek, 
whose manly deeds soon effectually won her affections. 

Christmas eve, 1861, put a million of armed men 
and two millions of diurnal debt into the long stocking 
of iron-ridden America. 



Division Second. 

Cotton Mixed. Jantiart 1, 1862, to Januaet 1, 1864. 

The Road to Peace. — Distance thither illustrated. — What certain Knights 
might have learned. — The Difficulties ci'eated by losing Battles in 
Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Arkansas detailed. — What Grant, 
Thomas, Curtis, and others did; and what Crittenden, Zollicoffer, etc , 
had done unto them. — Whistling in the Woods. — Wonderful Story- 
telling Powers of J. Davis. — How he repeated Tales with charming 
Variation. — A Sea Story in which Iron enters. — Farragut and Porter 
up the Mississippi. — Received at New Orleans with Illuminations and 
Bonfires. — Butler deals with effervescing Materials. — The Peninsular 
Campaign traced. — Spading and Fighting. — The Glories and Disas- 
ters of the Army of the Potomac. — The American Pope fallible. — 
Lee's Trip into Maryland. — Accidents at South Mountain and An- 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 497 

tietam. — Difficult Questions besiege Mr. Lincoln in Washington. — 
His New-Year's Gift to the Slaves. — Getting rich on Paper. — Cotton 
mixed. — A Depraved Currency. — Hooker gets at Lee's Rear at Chan- 
cellorsville. — What followed. — Lee at Gettysburg; gets the Advertis- 
ing its Springs want. — The Sorrows of Vicksburg, July 4, 186.3. — The 
Mississippi open. — Mortar-boat Building. — Valor of Colored Regi- 
ments at Charleston; and of discolored Irish in New York. — Con- 
trasts. — Grant Transfigured at Missionary Ridge and Look-Out Moun- 
tain without Bragging of it. 

" How far is it, my boy, by tbis road to Drains- 
ville ? " asked a mud-spattered traveller of a sbrewd 
lad by tbe roadside. " If you keep on the way that 
you are headiug," replied the boy, "and can man- 
age the Atlantic and Pacific on horseback, it is 23,999 
miles ; if you turn your horse's head and go right back 
it is one mile." 

Such were the comparative distances which the Eques- 
trian Knights of the Woolly Order — had they inquired 
on New-Year's morning, 1862 — would have found 
parted them from that desirable end of their weary jour- 
ney, the pleasant village of Peace. Looking, however, 
only at the delusive finger-boards which cottonized 
brains had set up along that way ; singing jaunty songs 
of Southern superiority and Northern low-down man- 
ners ; and listening to a confused distant cheer, occasion- 
ally borne to them by certain winds out of the North and 
by easterly breezes from Europe, they rode on, fancying 
that imj would soon dismount at their journey's end, 
give tfleir splashed animals into the accustomed charge 
of the old faithful, colored ostlers, and set down to the 
old dishes of glorious hominy and glorifying homily. 
Instead, however, of this experience, they met inter- 
minable difficulties, — Generals Crittenden and Zolbcof- 
fer, jostled out of saddle by General Thomas at Mill 



498 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Spring, and floundering badly through Kentucky into 
Tennessee ; another set captured at and with Fort 
Henry, Feburary 6th, by Flag-Officer Foote, whose flo- 
tilla kept on, as if little conscious of its impertinent 
doings, up the Tennessee River as far as Florence, with 
encouraging shouts from loyal throats on either bank ; 
Fort Donelson so surrendered to the silent-lipped Grant, 
Feburary 16th, and its twelve thousand men aud forty 
pieces of cannon so thoroughly taken up by him as to 
furnish no stopping-place for the tired party ; Missouri, 
constipated under the empiric treatment of Van Dorn 
and Price, and evacuated under the drastic prescrip- 
tions of General Curtis, too weak to entertain the travel- 
lers ; Pea Ridge, Arkansas, so shelled out by the Union 
pickers March 6, 7, and 8, 1862, that Ben McCuUough 
and numerous rangers had gone into dead silences 
when called upon for help ; New Madrid given up with 
six thousand butternut-colored troops to the constrain- 
ing faith in the American Pope ; Shiloli delivered in 
April to the armed Emanuel of Union expectations ; 
Island Number Ten, in the Mississippi, with its seven 
thousand hosts and vast supplies, taken possession of 
April 7th, so as to afford no shelter to the equestrians ; 
the restoration of all Kentucky and Tennessee back 
into the soft bands of the Union ; the destruction of the 
Confederate flotilla in Albemarle Sound, and the taking 
of Roanoke Island, Forts Macon and Pulaski, — these 
unexpected incidents, as they advanced on the long trip, 
were rude shocks to the sight, the comfort, and the 
spirits of the hard- whistling equestrians. Whistle how- 
ever they did and must, to keep up their courage through 
the gloomy woods, while to stimulate the flagging tern- 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 499 

pers of some of the riders, the leading horseman, Davis, 
told them in a high voice — loud enough to be heard 
all over Europe — some very exciting stories about 
Northern atrocities, made-up tales that beat everything 
in the way of romance since the Scottish Chiefs and 
Thaddeus of Warsaw. These stories always seemed to 
entertain the hard-travelling party, who frequently 
called upon him to repeat them, which he did with 
some charmingly horrible variations. 

Suddenly, however, on the 8th of March, a novel 
sight greeted the eyes of all in Hampton Eoads. The 
steam-frigate Merrimac, raised from her salty bed near 
Portsmouth, receiving a new coat of mail, an ugly look- 
ing iron rhinoceros-shaped snout, and the soft, new pet 
name of Virginia, rolled out in ungainly strength into 
the wide bay ; and commenced goring the Federal herd 
of wooden frigates, fatally ripping up the Cumberland 
and Congress, and cruelly gashing the St. Lawrence 
and Eoanoke. Unhurt herself, her scaly armor un- 
dented, she slunk back gorged to her lair, prepared for 
a more savage repast on the rest of the frightened gun- 
boats and ships on the following morning ; when lo ! 
on the morrow, tumbling out for her cruel pastime, she 
met the little, pert, saucy Monitor, one fifth her size 
only, and also clothed in steel, which stepped up close 
by her side and delivered two unexpected, round mes- 
sages, each weighing one hundred and sixty-eight 
pounds. Indignant at this interference with her in- 
tended lunch, the masculine Virginia commenced fling- 
ing iron bolts and round indignities, but the pert little 
thing hurled heavier blows back. The Virginia then 
punched her five times with her indignant snout ; but 



500 THE COMIC HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 501 

the wee one only laughed at her impotent raillery, and 
pitched back at her such crashing logic, that she rolled 
back again wdth her maw w^liolly unsated. On the 
part of the Monitor it was a Word-en-a blow. The 
well-hammered arguments, taught by the new system 
of military logic, carried alarming weight wherever 
maritime questions are chopped. 

Farragut and Porter soon after got up a yachting 
party, consisting of forty-five vessels, to cruise through 
the Gulf and up to New Orleans. Forty miles up 
from the river's mouth they encountered Forts Philip 
and Jackson, great chains, anchored hulks, and batter- 
ies, from which came very loud talk, and earnest pro- 
testations against any farther proceeding on the part 
of the yachtsmen. At length, however, by cutting 
the chain, the entire party, except two, pushed through 
in a terrible iron hail-storm, and reached the Crescent 
City, where they were received with terrific demon- 
strations, bonfires of fifteen thousand bales of cotton, 
illuminated blockade-runners, shipping, sugar, turpen- 
tine, molasses, and otlier loose-lying combustibles. 

Such an incendiary place had to be well secured; 
and on the 1st of May it was put into the firm charge 
of the Union Butler, who occasionally uncorked its 
riotous effervescence, and bottled up some of the more 
fermenting qualities. 

Meanwhile the long waiting public called for the 
fine drilling party in front of Washington, numbering 
nearly two hundred thousand, faithfully schooled for 
eight months, to take the intensely desired trip to 
Eichmond. Early in April, headed by General Mc- 
Clellan, it reached the old Revolutionary camping- 



502 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ground at Yorktown. Although, in fact, only five 
thousand Confederates were stationed there, the Fed- 
eral leader suspected traps ahead, and so went for a 
month to vigorous spading, road-making, and mining, 
resuming in this way his early occupations and tastes. 
These gratified, and no traps found, the army began on 
the 3d of May to move towards the Chickahominy, — 
a sluggish, soupy stream, thickened by swamp muds 
and miasma, — which was reached May 20tli and 
crossed. There was now more spading, and in sight 
of the Eichmond spires. 

For six weeks, alas ! the spade was busy, not for 
the living only, through this Golgotha of the war ; for 
now commenced a series of death-dealing combats sel- 
dom equalled in our well-mounded planet : May 27th 
the battle of Hanover Court-House, the Confederates 
losing ; followed by four days of severe skirmishes ; 
succeeded by the gigantic struggle of forty-eight un- 
ceasing hours of death-heaping on both sides, at 
Fair Oaks Station, between the corps of Sumner, 
Heintzelman, Kearny, and Hooker, on one side, and 
Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate commander. Long- 
street, and the two Hills, on the other ; then three 
weeks of intrenching, sickness, and decimation ; and 
then on the 25th of June, tlie retreat to the James, 
crowded with six days of ceaseless combats, embroid- 
ering in gloriously ensanguined characters on the 
shredding flag of the Potomac the well-fought but 
disastrous battles of Mechanicsville, Gaines's Mills, 
Savage's Station, White-Oak Swamp, and Malvern 
Hill, in which fifteen thousand Union lives were 
spent. 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 503 

General Lee was placed in command of the Confed- 
erates in the place of General Johnston, wounded at 
Fair Oaks ; and General Halleck displaced General Mc- 
CleUan, wounded before he left Washington in his 
military reputation, and, though unhurt bodily, more 
severely injured by his Peninsular campaign. 

General Pope was assigned to the head of the Army 
of the Potomac, but showed in fifteen days of fighting 
along the Eappahannock that, like another Pope on 
the Tiber, he was not at all infallible. 

In September General Lee took a trip into Mary- 
land, which he hoped to extend to Philadelphia. He 
was, however, followed by General McCleUan, rein- 
stated to the leadership of his old army. Their meet- 
ings at South Mou.ntain and Antietam swept thirty 
thousand Confederates under ground or into hospitals, 
largely counterbalancing the Peninsular losses. 

Cotton had become very mixed, and its skeins tan- 
gled and knotted. 

Difficult and dark questions now travelled to Wash- 
ington, and closely besieged Mr. Lincobi. Calmly, pa- 
tiently, and good-humoredly he sat down with tliem 
in a conference to which his own good sense and large- 
hearted wisdom were invited. The result was that on 
New-Year's day, 1863, free papers were plumped into 
the lean, slave stockings throughout all the somehow 
seceded States. 

During this period history and paper money were 
both made in large quantities ; and the paper business 
became very lucrative. We were getting rich very 
fast after the European fashion. In the midst of the 
armed clash, however, a very Pacific act was com- 



504 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

mitted, — tlie passage in July, 1862, of the Pacific Rail- 
road charter, which gave one hundred millions of rea- 
sons why the Union could not be broken. So far from 
giving up the South, Congress provided for making 
Japan and China American dependencies ; reaching 
out with steel fingers for their teas, silks, and almond- 
eyed live productions. 

The year 1863 dawned cheerfully upon the hitherto 
sombre whites North, as well as upon the more sombre 
sable loyalists at the South. Blockades on the coast , a 
currency as depraved as Breckenridge ; railroads undu- 
lating as saws, over which phthisicy engines groaned, 
as they drew the ever-lessening transportation ; and a 
population rapidly sieved by repeated drafts, signalled 
the ravages to which the Confederacy was subjected, 
and its lessening means constantly clipped and pared 
away. The curious stories of Mr. Davis had neither 
wrought a faith beyond his own equestrian escort, nor 
drawn any recognition from foreign spectators. 

Little was done through the winter in the field. 

Early in May, General Hooker, successor to Burn- 
side, and the fifth leader of the Potomac Army, having 
gained Lee's rear at Chancellorsville, kicked it severely 
for three hot days ; but was in turn kicked roundly. 
Each army lost about sixteen thousand men, — losses 
which, if united, would equal the entire number of the 
American troops engaged in the four principal battles 
of the Eevolution, — Bunker Hill, Princeton, Saratoga, 
and Yorktown. While this prolonged fight was going 
forward, Stoneman and Kilpatrick showed some astound- 
ing feats of horsemanship, in swinging around Fred- 
ericksburg and Richmond; cutting the Confederate 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 505 

lines with such nimble swords that it delighted an 
enthusiastic audience. 

In June, Lee, masking large designs on Washington, 
Baltimore, and Philadelphia, crossed the Potomac and 
showed his own face with uncounted others at Gettys- 
burg in Pennsylvania, where, for the first three days in 
July, he was so handled by Meade, that he left 30,000 
dead and wounded, 14,000 prisoners, and 27,000 stand 
of arms, to add attractions, that need no special adver- 
tising to Springs that receive so much. 

The next day, July 4, Vicksburg, fruitlessly assailed 
during 1862, and beleagured from May 4, 1863, by 
the reticent, self-contained, ever-pounding, never-com- 
pounding Grant, — who had inextricably tangled it by 
parallels and lines unparalleled, — surrendered its army 
of 30,000 men, 70,000 small arms, 200 cannon, with- 
out reckoning those dangerous edge-tools, for the use 
of which its desperate gamblers had so long been 
famous. Fortunately the surrender came too late to 
be abused by the orators of that patient and long- 
suffering day. 

The Mississippi Eiver once more bore all its pipes 
in peace. The mortar-boat masons, clearing away the 
ruins which the strikers had caused, had prepared 
anew the foundations for the prosperity of that noble 
valley, whose exuberant wealth is hereafter to be rolled 
adown it by unshackled hands. 

While the troops were absent from New York, repel- 
ling Lee's invasion of Pennsylvania, and the black regi- 
ments before Charleston were assisting Gilmore to 
execute the stern Federal judgment upon that place, 
the anti-war Irish in New York, largely left away 
22 



506 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

from the front by their own consent, gained the 
peaceful rear of the native-born colored men, women, 
and children of that city, and took a safe hand in the 
only kind of contest which they coveted. The valor 
which for three days they displayed, in destroying 
ppNperty wholly unowned, of course, by themselves, 
in chasing and hanging colored people, and in robbing 
all who had watches or purses to furnish lines for 
their avaricious bravery to attack, was, by a few, 
almost as much admired as the heroic courage of the 
regiments before Charleston. 

At Chattanooga, Grant, in the latter part of N'ovem- 
ber, by a heaven-touching struggle of three days, -drove 
away the Confederate forces out of the cloud-hidden 
heights of Missionary Eidge and Lookout Mountain. 
From this Tabor he himself came down, but not to 
Bragg of the transfiguration there. 

AU now admitted that cotton was very mixed and 
seedy. 



Division Third. 
Cotton Worsted. Janitart 1, 1864, to April 14, 1865. 

What the Confederate Stool — not of Repentance, but of Mars — stood on, 
and how braced and steadied. — The Daisies and Corn-blooms beneath 
it. — The broken Industries, harried Life, and disrupted Ties of Union- 
ists in the Border States. — Tragedies. — Grant Commander-in-Chief. 

— His Plan to break up the Nightmare. — Work ahead. — Jubal E. 
Early and his Raids. — The Year of Jubal E. — Sherman at Atlanta. 

— The Southern Knob seized, and the main Door burst open. — An un- 
protecting Hood; how it was pounded and cleft. — Sherman's Swath 
through Georgia. — A Christmas Gift to Mr. Lincoln of a Sheaf. — 
The Scorpion Alabama; its Hatching out; its slimy, wriggling Course, 
and sulphureous End. — The Iron .Taws of Mobile pried open, and its 
Teeth drawn. — Autumn brands at the North. — Tokens of the coming 
Fall. — Andrew Johnson and the Goose. — Grant breaks Things at 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 507 

Petersburg and disturbs J. Davis in Church at Richmond. — Flight of 
the Latter with con-uptible Treasures. — Negro Troops enter Rich- 
mond. — Light Suggestions thereupon. — A Meeting at Appomattox 
Court-House. — Leaving bloody Instructions, Lee goes to College. — 
J. Davis in Court and his Sentence. — A Thunder-Clap and its Victim. 
— Death of Abraham Lincoln. 

The Confederate stool — not of repentance, V t 
the iron stool of grim Mars — now stood on three 
legs. One rested on Southern Arkansas, braced 
by some eighty thousand regular soldiers ; one on 
Georgia, propped by General Johnston and a large 
force, drawing their supplies from the corn-cribs of 
that empire State of the South ; and the third and 
strongest, planted on the Eapidan, and steadied up by 
the well-sinewed arm of General Lee. Between these 
rude legs, however, were springing already along the 
furrows made by the ploughshare of strife the sweet- 
eyed daisies. Corn gathered its golden blooms out of 
the dreadful phosphates which had been strewn over 
so many fields. 

Yet while nature's healings were already anointing 
the ragged wounds of incisive war, over other and wide 
districts came ills which almost defied the buimlintr 
surgeries and irregular apothecary appliances that were 
wasted upon or unwisely aggravated them. In these 
districts predatory bands hovered over and constantly 
lit upon disorganized and broken industries, as crows 
cawingly follow a disrupted herd of buffaloes or swoop 
upon the wounded which fall out of the straggling- 
march. The harryings of cattle ; the plunder of farm- 
steads, of bean-patches, — nursed by the patient labor of 
suddenly made widows, — and even of houses seemingly 
secure from their proximity to villages ; wayside mur- 



508 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

ders from concealed coverts ; midnight shots at men 
asleep in bed, or treacherously called out on pretended 
errands of charity, and hewn down, frayed and fretted 
the lives of those who still clung to the Union through- 
out the Border States. There were daily tragedies, sad- 
der than the tinselled shows of the stage. There were 
masqueraders who danced through desultory cruelti^ 
at which even the readers of novels, languid over ordi- 
nary stories, enkindle into activity and excitement, and 
family feuds encrimsoning their way into living sor- 
rows and eventually into tales, Avhich in mercy we 
call fictions. 

The winter and spring of 1864 pendulated with 
balanced successes and reverses to either combat- 
ant. 

In March, General Grant was made Commander-in- 
Chief, and immediately set on foot a plan to wake up 
the uneasy sleeper and free him from the nightmare. 
This plan was to start simultaneously, and to keep in 
motion, the various corps of the Federal army ; Sher- 
man's one hundred thousand at Chattanooga against 
Johnston's army in Georgia ; Banks's and Farragut's in 
conjunction against Mobile ; and Grant himself, unit- 
ed with Meade, against Lee and Eichmond : thus 
shredding, at the same time, the still suspended cotton 
curtain, and preventing its busy stitchers at one point 
from assisting those making repairs at another. Meade 
crossed the Eapidan, May 4th, and advanced towards 
Eichmond, giving Lee a very lively hunt through the 
Wilderness for a month, and at length driving him over 
the soupy and astonished Chickahominy. At the same 
time Grant, holding his spirited team well in hand. 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 509 

drove up also towards the Confederate capital, until he 
halted on the south side of the James. 

Soon after, in order to divert attention from that 
long-coveted spot, Pdchmond, General Jubal E. Early- 
made into Maryland a raid, which he repeated in July, 
but from which he was sent whirling hack into the 
Shenandoah valley. He renewed his experiments 
again in September and October, but was finally 
chased out by Sheridan and his centaurs, wdio seemed 
to mount the wind, and, on their rapid and supperless 
rides to live off condensed night air. 

Along the hyperborean lines rang the warning after 
the discomfited Confederate : — 

" The year of Jubal E. is come, 
Ketum, ye wandering sinners, home." 

In the Southeast, Sherman, flanking Johnston at 
Dalton in Georgia, forced him through May and June 
southwards, delivering battles and defeats, — which 
were not ordered, — at Eesaca, Dallas, Pine Lost, and 
Kenesaw Mountains, until at last he shoved him be- 
hind the great southern knob, Atlanta, whose con- 
verging iron lines held the main door of the Lower 
Confederacy. Here Johnston disappeared, and the 
Confederate powers put a Hood over the head of 
the assailed Southeast; but all in vain. Sherman, 
pounding about the iron-covered Hood with hea^'y 
blows through July and August, cleft the head-piece 
in two ; and on the 2d of September cast him out, 
and, seizing the great iron knob, opened wide the door. 

On the rSth of November Sherman advanced 
through Georgia to the sea, taking a swath sixty 
miles wide, rolling up winrows at Milledgeville, cut- 



510 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE XJNITED STATES. 

ting down thistles, burdocks, and noxious weeds with 
his well-whetted scythe, until, on the 21st of Decem- 
ber, he reached the farther side of his great hay-field 
at Savannah. Gathering its crop into one Ijundle, he 
despatched it to Mr. Lincoln with this epistle : " I beg 
to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savan- 
nah, with one hundred and fifty guns, plenty of am- 
munition, and also about twenty-five thousand bales of 
cotton." Truly cotton now had become very worsted. 

In June, that British scorpion, the Alabama, — which 
had been hatched out at Liverpool in the spring and 
summer of 1862, while the British telescope was 
steadily turned in another direction, and which for 
two years had left its red slime all over the seas, sting- 
ing to death, as it wriggled in its venomous course, 
sixty-four peaceful American vessels, — was, by a single 
blow from the Kearsarge, sent to a sulphureous grave in 
the Channel which washed its birthplace. Diplomatic 
naturalists have ever since been disputing over the 
species and quality of this reptile ; while all agree, 
that, whether warm blooded or cold, it is not desirable 
that its kind be perpetuated. Its poisonous carcass is 
still coiled in offensive knots around the international 
diplomatic lattice-work of the two nations. 

During August, Admiral Farragut pried open the 
iron-set jaws of Mobile Harbor, drawing its teeth, — 
Forts Morgan, Gaines, and PoweU, — real molars as 
they were, producing spasms which threatened lockjaw 
to the obstinate patient. 

While the red autumn leaves were fallins throuah 
the North, Confederate brands were whirled, some out 
of Canada, others from Northern cities, upon the bank 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 511 

of St. Alban's, in Vermont, on warehouses in Buffalo, 
Detroit, and New York, on hotels in Cleveland, and 
on steamboats on the Lakes. The real sap in the 
Davis tree was now running down, and the top 
branches were shedding their crimson colors earth- 
ward. 

While these paling evidences of the fall were multi- 
plying, Mr. Lincoln was re-elected President, by two 
hundred and twelve votes out of two hundred and 
thirty-three. Andrew Johnson, then fifty-six years 
old, who had both early and late in life handled the 
goose, — the one kind as acceptably as the other, — 
and had been himseK cruelly plucked through the war 
by the masked plunderers in Tennessee, was placed in 
the easy nest of the Vice-Presidency. His first get- 
ting in was so awkward, that it was manifest some- 
thing had turned his head. 

Sherman, taking breath at Savannah, again swung 
his effective scythe through the thin crop, lying be- 
tween that city and Charleston, which was cut down, 
like a rank burdock, February 18, 1865. Then turn- 
ing northwards, he gathered in Columbia, the capital 
of South Carolina ; turned up to the sunlight dank 
villages, all unused to Northern implements, — cheered 
as he went by sable faces, — until at last he halted at 
Fayetteville, March 11, 1865, to take a hearty shake 
of the hand with his fellow-mowers. General Terry 
and Admiral Porter. Prom Wilmington, he again whet- 
ted up his keen blade and cleared the Southern field. 
Johnston, Beauregard, Bragg, and Hardee manifested a 
disposition to stop him at Bentonville ; but a blow sent 
them reeling from his path, and he went vigorously for- 



512 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 



e^. 



^.?^^'' N^^^: 




THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 513 

ward, garnering blessed harvests for his country and 
himself. 

Meanwhile Grant, through the autumn of 1864, was 
encompassing Petersburg and drawing zigzag lines 
around it, that were too much like the short epistles 
that creditors send to unwilling debtors, to be agreea- 
ble. The autumn leaves here fell on busy workers ; 
and among the busiest, the Silent Man, who was cast- 
ing up long accounts in his head, which only opened 
to let out smoke. In him, however, there was much 
fire, American and Greek. 

On the 24th of March, the Silent Man issued an 
order for a centripetal movement on Eichmond. Lee, 
in every way tried to break the converging fate. 
Along the Appomattox Eiver, at Fort Stedman, and 
at every weak-looking place, he hurled himseK 
against the links of a chain, now slowly drawing 
around him; but all to no purpose. On the 2d of 
April Grant broke through Lee's intrenched lines 
about Petersburg ; and Lee at once disturbed J. Davis, 
although at church in Eichmond, by a sudden notice 
that Petersburg and Eichmond were insecure places, 
and that he must flee to other refuges, than his old 
ones. Neither sitting nor lying would now do ; and 
accordingly the head of the Confederacy took to his 
feet, and fled with the few depraved treasures which 
had not gone ali'eady to corruption. Hurrying through 
Eichmond, he got away as fast as a very un-express 
train would carry him, over railroads hacked by Sheri- 
dan, Stoneman, and Grierson. The next morning 
General Weitzel entered the capital of the dissolving 
Confederacy — so long held by brave men — with a 

22* GG 



514 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

body of colored troops, — representatives of that fate 
which four years before had been ignorantly invoked, 
and now rapidly fulfilling, — representatives, too, of 
those one hundred and eighty thousand others, with 
skins colored like their own, who had given themselves 
to the service of a Union, whose stripes they had often 
felt, and whose stars for them had just peeped above 
the eastern hills and were beginning to sing for joy. 

Lee at once commenced a retreat towards the South- 
west, hoping to unite his broken forces with Johnston, 
who, however, was too actively taken up by Sherman 
to reciprocate his .intentions. At Amelia Court-House 
Sheridan and his centaurs suddenly appeared before 
the astonished Confederates on the 6th of April, and 
cut seven thousand away from them. The remainder 
General Lee dragged forward to Appomattox Court- 
House, and there delivered them over to the generous 
justice of his brother-in-arms, the silent-lipped, whose 
magnanimity was a fit type of the large forbearance 
of a country, which, wronged by a causeless war, — 
generated for ends that in other lands would have 
brought its authors to the place where all ropes termi- 
nate, — has to look back on no crosses, but for itself. 

A really fine character, a great strategist, and per- 
sonally brave man, the chief of the Confederate Army, 
who had delivered such " bloody instructions " to the 
fathers, became the head of a college, and deals out, 
it is to be hoped, better lessons to the sons. 

This surrender was followed, on the 26th of April 
by that of Johnston ; on the 4th of May, by the re- 
maining Confederate forces under General Dick Taylor ; 
by the miscellaneous taking of Mobile, Sebna, Tus- 



THE WAR OF IDEAS AND MUSKETS. 515 

caloosa, and Montgomery, and the unfortunate capture 
of Mr. J. Davis, whose lean head — made valuable to 
his captors by a useless expense to the treasury — 
was, at an additional expense, taken several times 
to Richmond, and shown to the court in satisfaction 
of his bail bond, and at last dismissed — to the gibbet 
of history. 

The black cloud, charged with such thunderous bolts, 
had dissolved, and the blue sky was showing through 
the rifted masses, when a sudden clap, a hissing sound, 
a sharp wrenching ciy, and there lay the straightened 
form of Abraham Lincoln. 

The victories which he had helped to organize were 
forgotten ; cotton worsted was unheeded ; even the 
terrible struggles with the long, wrestling nightmare, 
were all lost sight of in the grief for the Great and the 
Good, whose patriotism had warmed, whose integrity 
had strengthened, and whose genial humor had kept 
warm and mellow, the heart and hope of a brave and 
self-sacrificing nation through the contest just closed, 
— closed to open upon questions which had need, too, 
of a Solomon rather than a Jeroboam. 



CHAPTEE XX. 

VELOCIPEDAL. 

How mixed Blood effei-vesces. — Of the Causes and Developments of 
American Fastness. — Unrest in Prisons and at Home. — Time lost in 
Sleep, etc. — The distressing HuiTy of Brains. — Compressing a Cow 
in a Milk-Pot. — Of Doctors' Gigs and Apoplectic Whirligigs. — 
American Stomachs considered. — A general Stomach ; how employed 
and hired out. — Doctors' Bills. — Clothes Wringers and State Wring- 
ers. — " Speedy Trials " secured. — The Common and Un-commou 
Law of the United States considered at length. — Of Dower, and how 
taken. — Property administei-ed before Death. — Heirs cheated. — In- 
junctions used. — Illinois Divorces. — Of Prohibited Degrees of Mar- 
riage. — Of Fat People and Servants. — Boarding-Houses and Hotels. — 
American Trade and its Feats at diminishing Quantities. — Fast Amer- 
icans in Europe. — How they overcome Distances, History, and Land- 
lords. — The Paris Genus. 

IF "in the midst of life we are in debt," so in 
the midst of debt Americans are always lively. 
Mixed blood seems to discharge rapidly its effervescing 
ingredients. 

Fastness, except in the colors of our cheeks and 
chintzes and in the movement of our mails, works 
its curious ways through all manifestations of Ameri- 
can civilization. Over a small, old, long-cultivated 
territory, like most of the European, life moves re- 
spectably slow, careful of its savings, gathered up by 
centuries of work and put out at low rates of inter- 
est ; across continental stretches like ours, sweeping in 
wide districts and materials of unbundled, aching 



VELOCIPEDAL. 517 

plenty, it hastens with panting speed, and can afford to 
lose everything except time. Our great areas, there- 
fore, make us hvely, tlieir vast opportunities, restless, 
wide-talking, and manifesting the generous coarseness 
of a large-grained breadth. Out of these alone would 
come marked characteristics ; but when these are fur- 
ther quickened by accelerating activities of discovery 
in all departments, and by mechanical inventions of 
vast power in translating man and his products over 
the earth, the result is rapid brain- work, stimulating 
action, quick combinations, eruptive and vivacious 
speech. 

M. Varet, a French savan, lias ascertained that a fly 
caught by him in France made three hundred and 
thirty movements of his wdngs in a second. This is 
rapid work ; but a Wall Street bull wiU toss his horns 
twice as fast. 

The larger trains of thought thus started will run 
of themselves with time-table exactness. We shall 
only accompany a few special excursion ideas a short 
distance from the main depot. 

An impatient unrest under discipline and restric- 
tions, while kept below fever heat by the wet bandages 
of a self-imposed law, makes jails double punishments 
for American criminals, and homes often houses for 
the detention of juveniles under sixteen. Confine- 
ments, except to a small class of our married popula- 
tion, is an abridgment of enterprising work, which, 
if continued beyond a natural law tliat prescribes sleep 
to all and a longer period of inactivity to the special 
class just named, would be a grievance, calling at least 
for a convention, addresses, and agitation to get rid of 



518 THE COMIC HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

The distress of hurry, which vexes the vis incrtice out 
of our brains, stirs our intellectual pans continually, so 
that we do not always get the natural cream of ideas. 
An American is always working for condensed milk 
processes ; to compress a cow into a milk-pot, or utilize 
all the herds in his neighborhood on his breakfast- 
table, in a way unheard of elsewhere. Of course this 
wide-reaching hurry, which grasps large results and 
scorns the- domestic economies, that occupy the 
thoughts of people elsewhere, refuses to be concerned 
for any length of time with the imjDortunities of suf- 
fering stomachs. 

American stomachs have not time enough to wait 
on nature. Hence doctors' gigs and apoplectic whirli- 
gigs. A patent stomach that should grind grist for a 
neighborhood or village, and leave the unstomached 
worker to avail himseK of his accelerating opportuni- 
ties, would command a high price. It would be hired 
out around the neighborhood, like a threshing-machine 
or corn-sheller. In fact, American households might 
in general be advantageously grouped around or framed 
into one of these mechanical digesters, with attach- 
ments for washing out, ironing, and starching their 
clothes, and for doing up the wasteful processes of 
visiting, to economic advantages that would tell on the 
census. One of the disadvantages would be the dis- 
couragement of tliat branch of American industry, now 
so largely prosperous, of doctors' bills, chasing in vain 
after many of the living and at last only overtaking 
the administrator of the estate, clean out of breath. 

Of course, the benefits of associated wealth and skill 
have not been overlooked as levers to move enterprises. 



VELOCIPEDAL. 519 

people's purses, and sometimes those low-down, coarse 
adjectives, volcanic in their origin, wliicli, in case of 
dissatisfaction, erupt over the surface. Universal 
clothes-wringers are the product of tliis observation. 
So other combinations have been and are rapidly form- 
ing to Avring money out of city. State, and Federal 
exchequers. ' It is curious to see how the handles of 
these joint pumping and pocket-exhausting companies 
all lie towards the great cities. 

Most of the business in the United States, north of 
Washington, is carried on after an express and acceler- 
ated fashion, which is impatient of holidays, and rides 
over the Fourth of July even, as ruthlessly as an ex- 
press-train over the human obstruction which thus 
gets forwarded on his journey out of tlie United States 
with a despatch almost enviable to the survivors. 
Even the Federal Constitution prescribes "speedy 
trials " as a right, and treats a man as injured who 
does not go it in a capital way, when on that pre- 
cipitous road, with a final rush. 

The common law of the United States presumes 
that all are minute-men, and know the quick step; 
while the uncommon law in Wyoming, Idaho, Nevada, 
and Colorado dispenses with the tedious confinement 
between the apprehension of the accused and his 
transporting sentence and uprising. " Delays are dan- 
gerous," is their condensed code. 

The law of dower, as practically enforced, is shaped 
by the same rapidly revolving lathe, which makes so 
much of our domestic hollow-ware. The wife spends 
the principal before her husband's death, and thus 
shuns the tedious complications of legal proceedings. 



520 THE COMIC HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES. 




VELOCIPEDAL. 521 

which admeasures the dower often to the enterpising 
lawyer, the bailiffs, and the court clerks. 

A marked improvement has also been made in the 
distribution of estates generally. Among the slow 
nations of Europe the children generally wait for the 
unfortunate old people to die before taking their prop- 
erty. This tardy habit is now found to be often produc- 
tive of great injury to children, especially to those who, 
snatched away by rapid manners before their begettors, 
are thus defrauded of their shares. " A bird in the 
hand " is no longer a vara avis, but a domestic fowl 
cultivated by rapid feeding. Gifts to the living avoid 
the taxes and discomforts of probate courts, in which 
it is disagreeable for a family, covered with crape, to 
sit and see a politician assess the estate upon the 
heirs. 

Fast progress has been made, also, in preventive jus- 
tice. Injunctions, behind whose shields such old fogies 
as Lord Eldon, Lord Somers, Lord Thurlow, John Mar- 
shall, or William Story were accustomed to hide 
threatened rights until the danger was over-past, have 
recently been turned edgewise, and cut down coTiJora,- 
tions and others obnoxious Fisc-ally or otherwise, or 
else pressed against them so that they jDerspired away 
their adipose stock until they were comfortably ready 
for a receiver. 

The doctrine of divorce, which has puzzled the 
learned John Miltons in all the sleepy ages that have 
dozed before us, has been, in many States, simplified, 
so that he who runs through them may read a decree. 
Some people have uncharitably supposed that the pre- 
miums offered to individual disunions by such States 



522 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

as Illinois and Indiana, were devices to draw specii- 
laters thitlier for a day or so ; but these are vagrant 
suspicions that ought not to be allowed on our trains. 

In feudal countries, where purity of blood is careful- 
ly guarded, — inasmuch as the descents to property are 
the rule and not descents from it as in America, — legists 
declare that a woman may not marry her cousin, her 
uncle, her grandfather, or even her father, — a wise 
enough restriction, perhaps, for sucli benighted folks, 
and where care in marrying often leaves the female 
part of the household to the dangerous company of 
these relations until far on in life. But with us women 
are not shut up to any such necessities, except in Utah, 
where they may, in the course of a respectabl}^ long- 
life, marry through every genealogical degree without 
knowing it. In other parts tliey are as necessary as 
insurance companies, and so marry very soon ; so 
that silver weddings are often seen at an early age, 
while golden matrimonies are more frequent than ma- 
ternities or patrimonies. To every thoughtful man, who 
moves about our rapidly dissolving surfaces, where the 
railroad car is the kaleidoscope which turns up the 
bits of humanity in new combinations, a wife is neces- 
sary to put up a monument over him ; for moving on 
is such a fixed law, — the only fixed thing in America, 
except debt and live corruption, — that while he was 
turning his majority, all his family relations would 
have gone to other States. 

The two curiosities in the United States are fat 
people and servants. Both rmi away in a velocipedal 
hurry ; the former into sharp bargains, and the latter 
into independent powers which dictate treaties and 



VELOCIPEDAL. 523 

make alliances like otlier self-governing communities. 
An American family is like a South Carolina regiment, 
all officers and no privates ; a boarcling-liouse, a Swiss 
confederacy, in which the cantons, wedged into neutral- 
izing elements, get forward like a stool braced every- 
way and equipoised into an aching discomfort ; and a 
hotel, like twenty German Bunds entangled by contra- 
rious independent interests that knot themselves into 
teasing discontents, and fret into jars which hold a 
variety of unpreserved, acidulating fruits. The freest 
joke in all America is one of its large hotels, which 
fancies Axminster carpets and chandeliers in a large 
parlor, and numerous discomforts packed in ever-dwin- 
dling rooms, to be happiness. But then the " gentle- 
manly proprietor " makes up for all this in the bills, 
which convince all the guests, that they must have 
enjoyed themselves and at an American rate of speed. 

Trade has also had its great advances, not only in 
the figures which stand in merchants' magazines like 
pyramids, with bases always widening downwards, but 
in the dwindling measures, quarts, gallons, pecks, and 
bushels, and the waning qualities which sharpen up- 
wards to steady apexes. How to make up in the 
bill what is taken from the body is a critical study, in 
which most tradesmen have, without any prizes offered 
by outsiders, become great proficients. If that man is 
a public benefactor who makes two blades grow in the 
place of one, surely he may be rewarded with a passing 
notice, who takes all the steel out of the one sent to 
him for repairs, and then divides up the instrument into 
several blades. Making water into wine, clialk into 
milk, chemicals into as many varieties of drinkables as 



524 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

there are days of the year, and dihiting articles deemed 
too strong when left to their raw native vigor, so as to 
adapt them to our weakened constitutions, attest the 
beneficent designs of manufacturers and merchants 
upon Americans of plethoric habits. Peabodies shell- 
ing out to poorbodies furnish examples of abundant 
charity not so widely touching as these. 

To make a small measure go twice as far as a large 
one is more than a feat ; it approaches creation. What 
may in time be considered a double bed, it is impos- 
sible yet to foresee ; but certain it is, that while single 
beds are increasing to an alarmingly wide extent, their 
narrowness is becoming such as to require a new defi- 
nition of a line to avoid disagreeable collisions. 

Mercantile failures, elsewhere hurtful, are with us 
hurried on into vivacious benefits, dividing up, before 
the expiration of the credits given, the accumulated 
profits which otherwise might accumulate in stagnating 
dulness in the firm. A steady increase of wages is 
solving, too, those perplexing theories how to balance 
capital and labor ; a weekly distribution of earnings 
keeping down injudicious balances in the bank. 

The frequent jumps of men from low places into 
high ones, with a celerity very pleasing to their fami- 
lies and often to their creditors, show that the world is 
governed too much ; for acting on this Jeffersonian 
maxim, most of these ready leapers leave off the gov- 
erning part and expend their activities in securing, 
along with their weak salaries, strong flying benefits, 
which only light on the vigilant. 

While the velocipedal ways of Americans thus cut 
across their own country, it is in foreign fields that 



VELOCIPEDAL. 525 

they are most striking and cutting. Crossing the well- 
worn paths of Europe, scattering high-premium gold 
on those jolly fellows, landlords and waiters, they ridge 
its old historic surfaces with little histories which the 
facetious persons, who catch sight of them as they 
whiz through histories, which they leave grandly be- 
hind them and all unknown, retail with as much glee, 
as the travellers themselves once did saleratus, fine-cut 
nails, or bobinet. Their scant intellectual stores and 
unfurnished stock of knowledge, so far from embarrass- 
ing, only enable them to spin on faster. Mythology, 
paintings, biographies, architecture, are soon wound up 
on their clean spindles. 

Another class, like aeronaiitic vessels, have gaseous 
heads and heavy undergearing, which enable them to 
run over and run down everytliing abroad by swift-mov- 
ing slangs. They always float by the bad air of their 
own heads, and are apt to anchor in vicious soils. 
These they can-can. The spent money surprises the 
hotel squeezers ; the spent morals astonish themselves 
by the ease with which they lose their little all. 

But of all the fast classes in America, that is the 
most velocipedal which, having expressed themselves 
through the modish follies of the largest American 
cities, are transported to the stronger vices of Paris. 
Tired of tapping the younger trees of American growth, 
they spend the rest of their precious lives in pecking 
assiduously the rotten parts of foreign woods, content 
with the phosphoric slime of decay and dissolving 
maturities. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

PUZZLES AND CROSS-READINGS; OR, JOHNSON'S ENTER- 
TAINMENTS. 

APRIL 14, 1865, TO MARCH 4, 1869. 

Puzzles about Hemp and Paper. — Weak Brains at rest. — The Return 
of the Holders of Sabi'es and Guns. — Our Dead. — Fighters become 
Workers. — A Modern Sisyphus rolls a Stone up Hill. — How it rolled 
back. — The Interpretation by Congress of its own Rights. — Southern 
Delegates declined. — Puzzles solved. — Vetoing made easy. — The 
New Orleans Riots. — The Zigzag Journey of the President to the 
Tomb of Douglas. — The Fenian Republic in Union Square. — The 
Sham-rock compared with other Rocks. — The French Moths in Jlexi- 
co; and how they were singed. — Amnesties and Pardons. — Scrip- 
ture outdone. — Forgiveness forced upon the Unrepenting. — Results 
of Congressional Reconstmction. — The President tried and one found 
wanting. — Value of one Vote. — Alaska and St. Thomas. — Chicago, 
imalaiTned, goes on dis-pairing but not despairing. — The Narrow 
Escapes of New York. — Fiske-Ville. — Johnson gets JIudd out of the 
Dry Tortugas. 

WHEEE to find hemp enough to suspend those 
who had supported the overwhehned Confed- 
eracy was the first pu.zzle that presented itself to 
the furious patriotism of the constitutional Substitute. 
This, however, soon gave place to the still more 
difficult one, where to find paper enough to pardon- 
them. 

Four of the assassins of the good man were effectively 
deprived of any further earthly abuse of their weak 
brains, maudlin sentiments, and passions ; the others 



PUZZLES AND CROSS-READINGS. 527 

were sent between stone walls or to the dry sands of 
the Tortugas. 

The heroic holders of the sabre and musket, — then* 
stern, sad work now done, bore them back, — draped in 
sable for the comrades who slept in trenched glory- 
along the furrowed parallel, in the storm-swept field, 
or on the banks of the Mississippi, the Chickahominy 
and James, — back to the plough, to the workshop, to 
the peaceful businesses of life, to reunions with those 
whose busy fingers and busier hearts had forwarded to 
them love messages and mindful tokens while absent. 

The army of fighters was disbanded into battalions 
of. workers. 

On the 29th of May the new President commenced 
the Sisyphus business of Southern reconstruction ; 
first rolling to the top of the hill the stone of a pro- 
visional government for North Carolina, which, of 
course, rolled back again, covered by the old shells of 
the Confederacy. By the middle of July he had 
tugged up the same stone under different names, as 
Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Florida, and South 
Carolina, only to find it rolling down speedily, hurting 
the colored people and Union whites, and creating a 
butternut-colored atmosphere all around it. The en- 
tertainment was too often repeated to be jocose, except 
to Mr. Johnson, who believed in a detached idea in- 
dustriously pursued. The delegates to CongTess under 
his scheme, who presented themselves at Washington, 
in December, 1865, were found to be all of the saffron 
complexion and hue. They had already forgotten that 
there had been any war, and only remembered their 
ancient rights, and were ready to draw back pay, or 



528 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

anything else back, except declarations of not ha^dng 
been in the least wrong in the late little unpleasantness. 
Congress read their own privileges, rights, and duties 
in quite a different way ; declared their exclusive right, 
as representatives of the people, to deal with the new 
puzzles ; passed the Freedmen's Bureau Bill for the 
protection of the colored property of the South, the 
Civil Eights Bill, and the proposed Fourteenth Con- 
stitutional Amendment. While they believed in the 
dead past burying its dead, they did not embrace the 
idea of its burying the living with them. 

Mr. Johnson now studied the Art of Vetoing Made 
Easy ; and from his cross-readings began to add im- 
mensely to the American official archives by Xanthippe 
messages, whose unlovely words have greatly embossed 
the rich cabinets of vituperative specimens, for a long 
time accumulating at Washington. 

In July, 1866, a riot was created in New Orleans, 
— the counterpart of the pat-riot disturbances in New 
York three years before, — in which thirty-four loyal 
colored and three loyal colorless people were added 
to the Crescent cemeteries. The citizens who had 
participated in the bonfires and illuminations, on the 
arrival of Farragut and Porter in 1862 were merci- 
fully spared. In August foUovidng, the acting Presi- 
dent, accompanied by Mr. Seward, — wliose wonderful 
pen through the silent diplomatic struggle abroad, 
which ran parallel with the armed strife at home, 
cannot be alluded to with scant praise, — set out for 
Chicago, to lay the corner-stone of a monument to the 
powerful dike-breaker. Never was a journey so long. 
The road thither seemed to have got intoxicated and 



PUZZLES AND CROSS-READINGS. 



529 




23 



53U THE COMIC HISTOKY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

reeled and tumbled all over the West ; while the 
jerky speeches, hicciiping along the ^vslyj ways, 
endeavored in vain to catch up with and to find the 
President. 

This year was made memorable by the establish- 
ment of a wonderful republic for Ireland in Union 
Square, New York, and the quiet election, without any 
votes, of Mr. Eoberts to be its head ; an Irish inven- 
tion, for the easy solution of that perplexing question 
of how to get enough votes, most praiseworthy. The 
novel mode of raising an army, and of replenishing a 
treasury, whose invisible outflow was so steady and 
well regulated that it never perplexed Wall Street, 
were admirable illustrations of the good-nature of the 
friendly sons and daugliters of Saint Patrick. 

The sham-rock, on "\^•llich they touched poured out 
streams as abundant as the rock wliich Moses struck. 
Indeed, it was almost as good a milch cow as Plymouth 
Eock. 

In February, 1867, the French moths, — hatched out 
in 1862 in a Napoleonic fancy nest, and darting off 
into Mexico, through whose chronic flames they played 
with the usual results, — were terribly scorched in a 
candle sent out by Mr. Seward. The head moth, 
Maximilian, fascinated by the gilt of an imperial 
candelabra, was so burnt, that he disappeared like the 
vagaries of South American empire, which hovered on 
the wings of that other Gallic moth, that now flits 
around the gas-jets of tlie Tuileries. 

Mr. Jolmson's amnesties and pardons are too nu- 
merous for anything but a calculating-machine. He 
began May 29, 1865, and only ended March 4, 1869. 



PUZZLES AND CROSS-READINGS. 531 

Tired of cross-reading the Constitution, he betook him- 
self to Scripture, and, with his mode of interpretation, 
spelt out a duty to forgive all of the unrepentant, in- 
cluding Mr. J. Davis, the prize-taking Breckenridge, 
and other conspicuous sinners. 

In spite of the semi- weekly vetoes, however, which 
obliged Congress to pass all laws twice, it contrived to 
reconstruct all of the lately disorganizing and disor- 
ganized States except Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas. 
Some very poor Northern timber and unconstitutional 
braces were wrought into the hastily constructed and 
urgently needed fabrics, which, however, it is to be 
hoped, will be speedily removed. Angry with the so- 
lution of the puzzles, the President attempted to read 
athwart the Tenure of Office Act Mr. Stanton's war 
duties, for which, March 5, 1869, he was requested by 
the House of Eepresentatives to appear before the Sen- 
ate and make answer. From March 29th to May 16th 
his trial lasted, interflecked by some fine veins of 
forensic eloquence, and at last bringing out the value 
of a single vote, — that which prevented conviction, — 
for the benefit of future electoral harangues. 

The restless, lever pen of Mr. Seward pried up new 
territory for the screaming eagle to light upon, — the 
distant and hazy Alas-ka, rich in ices and other cool 
reasons, and St. Thomas the Danish, whose abundant 
lemons may, when well mixed, allay, without quench- 
ing, our thirst for foreign drinks. 

These speculations did not, it is needless to add, dis- 
courage Chicago. Always dis-pairing individuals, she 
never despaired for herself. Her courts granted four 
hundred and sixty-eight divorces during 1868 ; but not- 



532 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

withstanding the untoward fact, her unchecked popula- 
tion sang on more loudly consoling lullabies to her well- 
rocked and increasing cradles of grain. Efforts were 
made the same year to annex New York to the Erie 
Eailway and to change its name to Fisk-ville. These 
efforts might have succeeded, but that the attention of 
the leading proprietor was diverted to the Pacific; 
and the motion for the expected change was postponed 
to a later term of the Supremest Court in the city of 
New York. 

The last feat of Mr. Johnson was to get Mudd out 
of the Dry Tortugas. 



PUZZLES AND OROSS-KEADINGS. 



53^ 




CHAPTEE XXII. 

TAKEN FOR GRANTED; OR, WHAT IS EXPECTED OF GRANT 
AND THE AMERICAN FUTURE. 

MARCH 4, 1869, TO . 

The supposed Difficulties of writing History in advance considered, and 
the Popular Delusions on the Subject disposed of. — Lively Expecta- 
tions of what our future Presidents, Cabinet Members, Foreign Minis- 
ters, etc., etc., will be and do. — What Citizens will be exempt from 
Executing and Garroting the Laws. — The Public Debt to disappear. — 
The Ways considered. — Cut up into Dividends and no more heard 
of. — What is expected of Common Schools and Sunday Schools in 
Improving Public Men and their Speeches. — Certain Occupations to 
be dispensed with. — The LTses to which their Pursuers are to be put. 
— Improvements in .Judges, Injunctions, and Court-Houses. — Exten- 
sion of Efforts of Society for preventing Cruelty to Animals, to Employ- 
ers, etc. — Woman's Rights discussed from various Aspects. — Men and 
Women equal, — especially Women. — How any Differences between 
them are to be disposed of. — How Children are to be utilized before 
they get to be Twenty-one and lose their Activities. — The new Arts 
and Sciences to be taught. — Secretary of the Treasury to regulate the 
Fashions, and how. — The President and Sunday Schools. — All Min- 
ing to be transferred to Wall Street. — Advance Sheets of Reports for 
1969. — What our Railway System is to be. — Grambling and Patriot- 
ism. — Of the Future of Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Bos- 
ton. — A Pax Vobisaim. 



M 



OST people suppose that it is difficult to write 
history in advance. There is no greater delu- 
sion. Facts — even when we can get at them and are 
sure of them, which seldom happens — are great ob- 
structions to a narrative. They involve sudden leaps 



TAKEN FOR GRANTED. 535 

into unforeseen depths of human action, perplexing 
struggles through very dynastic uncertainties, or as- 
cents to unexpected developments of character, trying 
to one's judgment and patience, and often hurtful to 
one's pride of opinion. Our preconceptions, unverified 
by a set of obstinate facts, are distressed by the un- 
satisfactory contradictions. We halt dissatisfied on a 
dusty road, which the tramp of events has worn 
smooth, and left nothing to novelty or an industrious 
fancy. 

Besides, the great majority of readers are partisans, 
and have a right to be disappointed at and to blame 
those unreasoning conclusions, which slide inevitably 
out of realities. They confront sternly those facts, 
which affront them, by insisting on happening in 
a way or order different from their expectations or 
wishes. Hitherto, we have been obliged to conform to 
the hard conditions thus inherent in actual chronicles, 
and have been forced to submit our readers to these 
annoying certainties. 

We can, however, now dismiss these tantalizing 
fixities of events, which have run before us, and left 
us the wearisome business of catching up to them ; 
and leaving them to overtake us, if they can, to 
write up a future history of events, which ought to 
happen, and which will greatly disappoint the sanguine 
expectations of Americans if they do not. The excuse 
for failure will be lessened by the outlined path which 
we here stretch downward into the wooded future. 

We take it for granted, then, that all our futvire Presi- 
dents will be the very best and most competent men in 
the nation, spontaneously acclamated to the office, and 



536 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

not wrung out by industrious party conventions for 
political ends. Uncommitted to committees or political 
sponsors, and unweighted by onerous gratitude to ex- 
working party canvassers, they will naturally hereafter 
pensively ajDpoint to Cabinet places and diplomatic posts 
sta^tesmen of pre-eminent ability, patriotism, and integ- 
rity, who will as modestly wait to be invited in, as the 
same class now, when in, stand as if hopelessly deaf, to be 
distinctly invited out. That they will reluctantly, if 
at all, subject weak citizens to the pains and penalties 
of executing and garroting the laws, or the slow and 
unpractised, to the heavy tasks of carrying the public 
burdens. 

The public debt will naturally disappear. Perhaps 
some fortunate speculator in petroleum or Erie stock 
will pay it off, rather than have it in the way, or see it 
left to bear the market inopportunely. The secret of 
making money scarce will lead doubtless to the dis- 
covery of making it plenty ; and then the public debt, 
being of no use to anybody, will naturally stand aside, 
as poor relations in times of plenty. Besides, gentle- 
men being selected, not for their own interests, but for 
the public good, will, it is to be expected, donate their 
salaries to a sinking fund, which will carry it off, as 
some companies do their stockholders' dividends, to un- 
fathomed bottoms. In fact, if the debt could be cut 
up into dividends, nothing more would be heard of it. 
If the whole truth may be safely told, the difficulty in 
the extinguishment of the debt will not be so much in 
its undoubted disappearance, as in settling upon that 
plan among the numbers presented, which will be per- 
mitted to hurry it out of sight. 



TAKEN FOR GRANTED. 537 

Of course, when the Federal obligations quit, the 
State and city debts will not have the face to remain 
behind. 

These subjects out of the way, members of Congress, 
being then gentlemen, as well as educated, capable, and 
honest men, dragged unwillingly from and not into 
business, will deal with the few remaining topics with 
a wise silence, — and this course we take for grant-ed 
now ; or else will discuss them and not each other, or 
the encyclopaedia of unrelated questions, the publication 
of which now so enhances the price of paper. 

This improvement in our Congressional debates will 
have a corresponding advantage, also, to those foreign- 
ers who, desirous of learning our system, venture upon 
the speeches made at the Capitol, and, hopelessly mis- 
led by the terms employed, and the ferocious adjectives 
that commit horrible murders on almost every para- 
graph, confound our geography with that of the Can- 
nibal Islands. We also take it for granted, that our 
public men will wait for events to justify the crude 
speculations, which they toss out in conversations with 
reporters, before cruelly amusing the good-natured 
public with their vaticinations. Possibly, too, the 
spread of common schools and Sunday schools, teaching 
grammar and morality, may lead to the disuse by our 
print-rushing politicians of styles of speech quite in- 
comprehensible, and of words so raw in outline and so 
destitute of middle letters as to lead profane people to 
fancy that they are imitations of their own heedless 
expressions. Of course, in the better days now dawn- 
ing, " rings " will only be used to tie quadrujjeds to 
posts, or to restrain vicious bipeds in state prisons. 
23* 



538 THE COAIIC HISTORY OF THE UNI I ED STATES. 

Combinations to do good and increase the general 
happiness will naturally supplant tliose curious Ameri- 
can circles, whose peripheries are not equidistant from 
the centre, bvit which consist in fact only of a centre, 
and that centre, self. 

• Happiness, and not wealth, being thus the main 
pursuit, of course many kinds of occupations, now 
called business, such as brokers, money-lenders, etc., 
will cease, and those now engaged in these so-called 
pursuits — of others, will look after the poor to minis- 
ter unto them and not to take them in. The superior 
claims of charity upon the fortunate, who are now 
living, will naturally be enhanced by the fact that, 
being at present in the Avorld, th'ey cannot reasonably 
expect to live much longer than 1970, and may quit 
much earlier, leaving some selfish heirs not disposed 
to divide except for an equivalent. 

Many judges being released from their present ardu- 
ous duties of so administering law as to get re-elected 
— for then no one will value an office so much a 
sinecure — will have some time, especially in New 
York, to study law ; and some courts of appeal can be 
repealed. The only injunctions issued will be oral, 
delivered, not to railroad speculators, but to indiscreet 
juveniles, unwarily betrayed into their first and last 
offence. The expense of court-houses being thus par- 
tially saved, it is expected, that the small unventilated 
places in which law is peddled out will be enlarged, 
and a liumane effort be thus made to save the exposed 
lives of suitors, lawyers, jurors, and judges. 

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 
to Animals will naturally, with larger means, extend 



TAKEN FOR GRANTED. 539 

its operations, and embrace employers, suffering from 
servants of independent ways, from domestics who 
take six evenings in tlie week out, and allow their 
mistress one, and who, for certain discreet considera- 
tions, not wortli mentioning here, permit those, who 
divide their estates with them, to occupy a portion of 
the same house, on condition of not interfering with 
their separate apartmentsi 

We also take it for granted, that w^oman's rights 
will not be wrongfully urged or withheld ; but will be 
so adjusted, that the public will ascertain what some 
people would ask for, if they did not become incompre- 
hensible through abundant talking, or what — con- 
sidering the modesty of the applicants — they really 
ought to have, although they do not clamor for it in a 
way that makes some suspect, that men are either 
to be extinguished outright, or else kept for a few 
hundred years on probation, until they shall have 
learned to be respectful, just, and unmanlike. 

In this coming good time, men and women are to 
be equal, — especially the women. If any differences 
are discovered in any way between them, these differ- 
ences are to be submitted to conventions chosen by 
the wisest women, and the differences either to be 
entirely suppressed, or the dissenters all expelled from 
the United States. Uniformity is to be secured at all 
hazards. If necessary, ballot-boxes will be attached 
to cradles ; and women, by any cause confined from 
active canvassing, will be allowed to vote twice at the 
next election, in order to bring up their rights to a 
point where nature left them. 

We further take it for granted, that children will 



540 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

then be content to be vivacious ; will be left to the 
witching ways, the pulpy and dewy freshness of the 
morning glory of life, until they shall have gradually 
come to the ripe maturities of action ; that they will 
not fall from grace into the condemnation of mis- 
chievous notice ; will not daily burst into astonishing 
feats of memory or attainment before reluctant, domes- 
tic audiences, nor carry on social insurrections against 
the United States of their begettors until they have 
achieved their independence, nor hold a Fourth of 
July every day in tlie year. 

Should reform in this direction not take place as 
just anticipated, then we shall expect that infantile 
precocities will be utilized before they shall have 
evaporated into the insipidities of manhood and wo- 
manhood. At present, it is well understood, children 
are anachronisms, sadly out of place, squandering 
uselessly their best powers without any corresponding 
responsibilities ; legally treated as minors, when they 
are in fact majors ; denied the legal rights to marry 
until they reach a period when marriage is tame and 
idle, and the means to support a wife are exhausted ; 
prohibited from going to Congress and being Presi- 
dents, while full of original ideas and administrative 
ability, and allowed to go when they have oozed away 
through the leakages of active growths all capacity, 
and become just; — what we see them at Washington; 
and wasting in pantalets the money which, if suf- 
fered, they miglit earn better than the old heads 
which are now only figure-heads. 

We shall not be surprised to see, if not during 
Grant's time, at least before the century runs out, a 



TAKEN FOR GRANTED. 541 

constitutional amendment relieving aged Americans 

— those, for example, who have attained the ripe, very- 
ripe age of twenty-one — from the duties and cares of 
office, and securing to the public the benefit of young 
vigorous intellects, varying from twelve to seventeen 
years of age. 

The happy results of this change will be apparent 

— to any infant mind. Short-jacketed M. C.'s will 
impart new vivacity to Congressional debate ; young 
ministers to foreign courts will be able to acquire, if 
they do not know, some language beside the American, 
and be able to converse with those with whom they 
have business, — an un-speakable luxury now. Active, 
bustling infants will give a new ardor to journal- 
ism, and produce a more enterprising corps of wide- 
awake; newspaper correspondents, to keep up the stock 
of telegraph companies by information which, being 
constantly in advance of the facts, would fairly repre- 
sent and be fitting types of, the infantile correspondents 
themselves, and necessitate additional contradictions. 
As territorial governors, obliged to take hazardous 
journeys on our railways, — which often intervene and 
prevent older men from reaching their destination, — 
they would be nimble enough to get out of the wreck, 
or perhaps smart enough to keep their deaths secret, 
and haye their ancestors draw their salary, — thus 
accomplishing, although not present, the principal 
business of that office. Then, too, how much livelier 
would things go on in our churches, if, instead of the 
dull, old elders, deacons, or vestrymen, now seldom 
elected before they reach the great age of thirty, and 
who, when they were boys, were smart enough, although 



542 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UMTED STATES. 




TAKEN FOR GRANTED. 543 

not as alert as their own boys now, were allowed to 
rest their stiffer awkward limbs in their pews, and 
ecclesiastical affairs were managed by their youngers ? 
The sick would be visited by cheerful, round-faced 
persons, bright with the health which would be brought 
as a living fact to the invalid ; widows would be com- 
forted by the presence of dark-haired and hopeful 
youths, and not depressed by the aspect of people en- 
cumbered with wives and the chilling experience of at 
least a score and a haK of years ; while the poor would 
receive liberally from those who well know, that the 
best use for money is to keep it in vigilant circulation. 

Business would also be conducted on youthful prin- 
ciples, in consonance with the other rapid ways of the 
times ; capital would be nimble and alert, creating 
profits so lively that they would leap back into the 
common and rapidly running current. Old legislative 
peculators, bank and trust defaulters, would soon, in 
the natural course of things, and without the shocks 
of legal trials, — which generally produce no results, 
— be displaced ; while young iniquity would scarcely 
acquire the rime and rust which now incrust so many 
of the old instruments of corruption, making them 
almost respectable. Biographies, now often running 
tediously through so many chapters, would be brief; 
as an American life might be assumed to close up 
substantially at twenty-five at least, and we should 
get the rich morning cream, without wearying our- 
selves with collecting the thin globules that float on 
the pan of age. 

In the better times to which of course everybody 
looks, we take it for granted, also, thai the every-day 



544 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

arts and the familiar sciences, now taught in schools 
and colleges, will be laid aside ; and that Greek, Latin,. 
French, German, Italian, Irish, and other tongues, — r 
those sad I'eminders of Babels and other polyglot at- 
tempts and results, — will give place to more practical 
studies. How to cook, so as not to destroy the rem- 
nants of stomachs left by candy-eating, hot breads, and 
other delectable addictions of the old barbarous times 
which America has passed dyspeptically through ; 
how to get a husband or wife, in every way suited 
to the expectations and ideas of different members 
of the family, and on a scale mathematically ad- 
justed to the pecuniary latitude and longitude caljju- 
lated from the paternal meridian ; how to scale a tariff 
for conductors, which shall not raise the market price 
of gold rings, studs, and heavy watches, and yet leave 
something for the directors to operate the stock with ; 
the best methods of acquiring a fortune without the 
stale process of failure and settling with creditors ; the 
mode of conducting railway collisions and steamboat 
explosions, without ruining whole families and de- 
stroying rising communities at a blow, and without 
leaving so many facetious questions to funny coroners 
and irresistibly comic jurors ; a method of advertising 
wares and leaving some praiseful adjectives not used 
up ; a system which should graduate the decrease in 
weights and measures to the price ; and how to make 
an hour's work go as far as ten old-fashioned absurd 
hours, — these will help to furnish out a curriculum 
of study for institutions high and low. 

The fashions will be regulated by the Secretary of 
the Treasury, who will issue a daily telegraphic buUe- 



TAKEN FOR GRANTED. 545 

tin, SO that no one shall have any advantage over 
another. 

The President of the United States, by way of keep- 
ing his hand in, may practise on a Sunday school every 
Sunday, addressing them in rotation, and going over 
those in New Jersey and Texas several times, if a safe 
pass can be secured. The antique modes of mining 
will be abolished altogether. A central bureau, located 
in Wall Street, will so work all kinds of veins and 
arteries, auriferous, argentiferous, and verdibackish, as 
to entice out all their Aalues on call. 

The traditions about gold are to be wrought up into 
poetry, and thus forever forgotten. • 

We have been put in possession of the advance 
sheets of several reports, to be made to the various 
State legislatures in 1969, on "The Absence of Legis- 
lative Corruption," from which it is manifest, that 
notliing with money in it ever reaches the capitals of 
that day, and that the members are left to the tedious 
business of practical legislation, their spare time being 
amused with antiquarian researches into the capital 
chances for money -making between 1860 and 1870. 
It is also apparent from these coming reports that great 
amusement is to be afforded by a study of the severely 
virtuous styles of examinations, conducted by commit- 
tees of our time, into alleged briberies of fellow- 
members ; while the hotel bills of the cautious investi- 
gators are to be regarded as inimitable specimens of 
the gastronomic abundance of their predecessors in 
America. 

We also take for granted, that the railway system 
of the United States will be wonderfully simplified. 



546 THE COMIC HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. 

We now make it a matter of boasting that since the 
beginning of our railways, in 1829, we have extended 
them until, in forty years, they have reached a length 
of 38,500 miles, or a circuit around the earth one and 
a half times ; costing in their construction and equip- 
ment $ 1,700,000,000, or a sum equal to two thirds of 
the debt of the United States ; employing 8,000 en- 
gines and 135,000 cars, or enough, if placed side by 
side, to reach from New York to Chicago, and carry- 
ing annually 145,000,000 of passengers, or a number 
more than four times the whole population, men, 
women, children, and John Smiths put together. We 
are jubilant over the completion, in four years, of the 
Pacific Eailroad, 1,900 miles in length, forming a 
line from New York to San Francisco of 3,353 miles, 
straining across prairies, chasing off herds of buffalo, 
spitting Utah with a skewer, climbing the Sierras 
8,000 feet high, and levelling the Eocky Mountains 
with iron maces. 

All these performances are, in the absence of any- 
thing better, and in our poor beginnings, not disdainful 
topics of conversation or newspaper comment. But 
in the near future we take it, that a single consolida- 
tion of all lines in the hands of one man, — whose 
name at present we mercifully withhold, — replacing 
our wooden depots with stone structures tastefully 
decorated with waving flags and live eagles, our tressel- 
work bridges with solid granite buttresses, spanned by 
iron girders, — the old ones being kept under glass 
cases for curious exhibition, — will so prolong, carry 
around, and multiply iron ways, that the entire popu- 
lation of the United States, excepting, perhaps, news- 



TAKEN FOR GRANTED. 



547 







548 THE COMIC HISTORY OF E UNITED STATES. 

paper reporters and members of Congress, will be in- 
vited several times a year to take a pleasure trip, 
gratuituously, to every town having a thousand in- 
habitants, and be entertained six months on the sus- 
pended dividends, made palatable by watered stock. 

Grumbling will, also, in those gladsome days, be 
left to the unnaturalized Englishmen among us, and 
to those wry-faced observers of the weather and crops, 
who get up such very unlively stacks of figures, and 
elongate their rueful faces beneath their cold shadows. 

Patriotism will, of course, be merged in a cosmo- 
politan feeling ; for, as our boundaries will naturally 
take in nearly all the world, what is outside will be 
the subjects of our pity and commiseration, as those 
portions of the globe unfortunately left outside of 
England were, a few years ago, to Englishmen. 

Chicago will then have so many elevators, that she 
will raise not only her surface above Lake Michigan, 
but her manners to a point where mending can begin. 
New York will doubtless be ruled by a descendant of 
the Fisk-al family, who will utilize New Jersey as a 
railroad depot or a coal-yard. Philadelphia, letting 
go of New York as a bad job, beneath her satire, 
will have such a Eush-ing library as to be the book 
lender of the Union. Boston will be, to her delight, 
roofed in, and become the Publication Office of Fields, 
Osgood, & Co., with Faneuil Hall and the Athenaeum 
for press-work and lithographing ; while the Southern 
cities along the coast will serve as light-houses for the 
dark landscapes which have hitherto glowered behind 
them. 

Cotton will be more than king, — will be a good 



TAKEN ")R GRANTED. 



649 



thrifty farmer, replacing broom-sedgy fields with smiling 
furrows, razor-backed hogs with blooded stock, and will 
stand out in round completeness, not isolated by a 
heritage which kept it aloof from the world, but 
linked in a rosy chain of productive good witli the 
happy brotherhood of work, prosperity, and well-doing. 

We need hardly add, that we shall leave off prais- 
ing ourselves when we shall most deserve praise, and 
cease to be sensitive to foreign censure when we shall 
be hardy enough to laugh at it. 

As everybody is naturally expecting to be happy, 
so we expect that everybody will be, without being 
seriously hurt or stunted by any of the little taps of 
this liistory. Pax vobiscum. 

Meanwhile, and until all these blessed times and 
expectations shall converge into the focalizing future, 
we trust that our readers, jolly, good, and happy, will 
get over, as best they can, the intermediate spaces, 
keeping their eye and faith steadily upon 



THE END. 







